Now, what if Trump goes through with this? These policies will mean more coal burning in the United States, more deadly air pollution, more carbon dioxide emissions.
A Lux Research modeled the impacts, which shows Trump’s policies would lead to an extra 3.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions compared with Clinton’s proposals.
Not only for America but because of America and their choice, for the rest of the world, the impact could be seismic.
The world was actually making slow but steady cautious progress on global warming. Thanks to Mr. President of America that is now all in vein.
Over the past eight years, the Obama administration has been using every regulatory lever at its disposal to push down US carbon dioxide emissions via executive actions. Obama has also been trying to coax countries like China to participate in a global climate deal, under which every country would voluntarily pledge to restrain its emissions and meet regularly at the United Nations to ratchet up their ambitions over time.
This plan came to fruition last December, when the world agreed to a sweeping climate agreement in Paris. The Paris deal was always delicate, and the current pledges aren’t nearly enough to avoid dangerous global warming, defined as 2°C or more. But the deal was the first step towards it. And the hope was that by cooperating and exerting diplomatic pressure on each other, all countries would steadily increase action over time.
Now that’s in a danger. If a President Trump were to yank the United States out of the Paris agreement, the deal wouldn’t die, but the momentum could easily wane. It’s not hard to imagine China and India deciding they don’t need to push nearly as hard on clean energy if the world’s richest and most powerful country doesn’t care. At best, momentum would slow. At worst, the entire arrangement could collapse, and we set out on a path for 4°C warming or more.
This is not only the future of Americans but the entire humanity at stake. The world is at risk of departing from the stable climatic conditions that sustained civilisation for thousands of years. We’re lurching into the unknown. The world’s poorest countries, in particular, are ill-equipped to handle this disruption.
