President Trump’s action yesterday in withdrawing from the
2015 Paris agreement on limiting climate change is probably unfortunate but not
the disaster that the media is claiming it is. The 2015 climate agreement had
two main parts. First, each country set itself voluntary limits on greenhouse
gas production, and most countries set themselves limits that would be easy to
reach. There is no enforcement process in the agreement, so it was all
voluntary and subject to being ignored, as most countries did with the previous
agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. And in fact the consensus in the scientific
community is that the voluntary goals actually set in the Paris agreement wouldn’t
be enough to prevent a long-term global increase of over 2° C, which was the
goal of the Paris agreement.
The major contributors to greenhouse gases, the US and China,
who together account for about 45% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the
atmosphere (29.4% from China, 14.3% from the US), are already in the process of
beating the goals they set themselves for economic reasons completely divorced
from the Paris Agreement. China is trying to control their air pollution
problem. 62% of China’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants, but they
have recently suspended or canceled construction on over 100 more new
coal-fired plants in an attempt to address the pollution problem. In the US cheap oil and gas from fracking has
in recent years largely displaced coal as an energy source, reducing our
production of greenhouse gases. In addition,
wind and solar power are providing an increasing proportion of the energy on
the grid. So withdrawing from the
climate agreement, while probably politically unfortunate, probably won’t really
make much difference in the long run.
Second, the Paris agreement aimed for first world pledges of
$100 billion annually to address impacts of climate change in poorer countries.. The US pledge was $5.9 billion, but we have
actually contributed only $500 million thus far. The total pledges as of Feb
2016, the latest data I can find, were only $10.2 billion, meaning that in fact
the US pledge was over half of the total pledge. So Trump is right that the US
is, thus far, bearing a disproportionate part of the financial load. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol also aimed for
substantial pledges for green projects, but in fact little was actually
pledged.
So the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement is probably
poor statesmanship, but I don’t think it is really going to make that much
difference in global warming in the long run. No nation is going to seriously impact
its economic growth or displace large numbers of workers to meet these goals,
and if their governments tried they would probably be voted out of office. But in the long run the advent of cheap solar
and wind power and the resurgence of nuclear power will probably accomplish
what these sorts of unenforceable international agreements can’t accomplish. Economic self-interest is always more reliable than bureaucratic agreements.
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