by Robert N Stavens
The International New York Times
 |
Donald J. Trump once tweeted that “the
concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to
make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” Twitter messages may not be
clear signs of likely public policies, but Mr. Trump followed up during
the campaign with his “America First Energy Plan,” which would rescind
all of President Obama’s actions on climate change.
The plan includes canceling United States
participation in the Paris climate agreement and stopping all American
funding of United Nations climate change programs. It also includes
abandoning the Clean Power Plan, a mainstay of the Obama
administration’s approach to achieving its emissions reduction target
for carbon dioxide under the Paris agreement.
What should we make of such campaign
promises? Taking Mr. Trump at his word, he will surely seek to pull the
country out of the Paris pact. But because the agreement has already
come into force, under the rules, any party must wait three years before
requesting to withdraw, followed by a one-year notice period.
Those rules would seem to be mere
technicalities. The incoming Trump administration simply can disregard
America’s pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent
below the 2005 level by 2025. That is bad enough. But the big worry is
what other key countries, including the world’s largest emitter, China,
as well as India and Brazil, will do if the United States reneges on its
pledge. The result could be that the Paris agreement unravels, taking
it from the 97 percent of global emissions currently covered by the pact
to little more than the European Union’s 10 percent share.
In addition, Mr. Trump’s Environmental
Protection Agency probably will stop work on regulations of methane
emissions (a very potent greenhouse gas) from existing oil and gas
operations. Undoing complex existing regulations, such as the Clean
Power Plan, will be more difficult, but a reconstituted Supreme Court
will probably help President Trump when that plan inevitably comes
before the court.
Also, the new president will most likely ask that the
Keystone XL pipeline permit application be renewed — and facilitate
other oil and gas pipelines around the country.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised
to “bring back” the coal industry by cutting environmental regulations.
That may not be so easy. The decline of that industry and related
employment has been caused by technological changes in mining, and
competition from low-priced natural gas for electricity generation, not
by environmental regulations. At the same time, Mr. Trump has pledged to
promote fracking for oil and gas, but that would make natural gas even
more economically attractive, and accelerate the elimination of
coal-sector jobs.
If he lives up to his campaign rhetoric,
Mr. Trump may indeed be able to reverse course on climate change policy,
increasing the threat to our planet, and in the process destroy much of
the Obama legacy in this important realm. This will make the states
even more important players on this critical issue.
Robert N. Stavins is a professor at Harvard, where he directs the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.
No comments:
Post a Comment