Abstract
Abstract
Despite widespread democratic support for continued participation in the Paris Agreement, U.S. President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from it in June 2017. The decision signaled a democratic dysfunction in the face of climate change, one that will likely hold negative consequences for communities exposed and vulnerable to the effects of continued fossil fuel use and climate change. This article argues that Trump's decision opens 4 “pathways” by which these harms might be transmitted in the coming years: (1) by prolonging the viability of U.S. fossil fuel development; (2) by prolonging a period of slow and unambitious global climate action; (3) by extending to climate efforts a worldview that will open future climate policy up to reactionary resistance; and (4) by rescinding funding for adaptation projects in vulnerable communities.
Introduction
A
To be sure, the Paris Agreement was far from ideal. It invited countries to individually determine their respective national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Predictably, many of those targets were unambitious, 3 and, if not improved on, set the world on a path to warm by ∼3°C or more relative to preindustrial times. 4 The agreement also lacked enforcement mechanisms, relying on soft power to pressure countries to meet their targets. Its ability to achieve its goal of keeping temperature rise below 1.5°C or well below 2°C was thus always in doubt.
Yet, despite its flaws, Paris nevertheless represented a step forward from the failure at the previous major climate summit in 2009 in Copenhagen to secure a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. The agreement was greeted with cautious optimism even by commenters who understood that Paris does not go far enough. 5 As McKibben put it, “the hope of Paris was that the treaty would send such a strong signal to the world's governments, and its capital markets, that the targets would become a floor and not a ceiling; that shaken into action by the accord, we would start moving much faster toward renewable energy, maybe even fast enough to begin catching up with the physics of global warming […] And that's precisely the moment President Trump chose to make his move, a bid to undercut our best hope for a workable future.” 6
Trump's decision will hold consequences for communities exposed and vulnerable to the effects of fossil fuel use and climate change. Those consequences will not be immediate, but will play out over several years. They will also not be as straightforward as might seem at first blush; it seems unlikely, for example, that the decision will lead to U.S. emissions simply continuing along business-as-usual projections 7 or to other governments abandoning the agreement en masse.
I here propose a means by which to anticipate the ways Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement may engender negative impacts for climate justice communities. I argue that Trump's decision opens four pathways through which harms can potentially be transmitted in the coming years and in ways that will not always be straightforward: (1) by prolonging the viability of U.S. fossil fuel development; (2) by prolonging a period of slow and unambitious global climate action; (3) by validating and extending to climate efforts a worldview that will open future climate policy up to reactionary resistance; and (4) by using the announcement of the withdrawal as an occasion to rescind funding for adaptation projects.
Discussion
Prolonging the viability of U.S. fossil fuel development
The U.S. commitments to the Paris Agreement were substantial, and would have accounted for 21% of global emissions avoided up to 2030. 8 Achieving those emission reductions with high certainty would have required very ambitious domestic policy efforts. 9 A different administration that honored the Agreement and understood it as a stepping stone for an even more ambitious climate action could have used it to justify policies aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, which might have included the cancellation of future fossil fuel projects, the dismantling of existing ones, a rapid elimination of industry subsidies, and a rising price on carbon.
Trump's withdrawal from the agreement does the opposite, thereby prolonging the continued economic viability of domestic fossil fuel extraction and expansion; fossil fuel firms need no longer consider the specter of Paris in medium-term planning decisions concerning resource development and production in the United States. In this way, Trump's decision means that there will be frontline communities, many of them indigenous or of color, exposed to the dangerous health and environmental consequences of fossil fuel extraction, transportation, and refinement who would otherwise not be.
A related potential consequence is that the coming years will likely see the U.S. climate justice movement escalate its tactics to counteract fossil fuel projects that would not have gone forward under an administration embracing its Paris commitments. If so, the mobilization costs, the legal penalties, and (as the Standing Rock Sioux experienced when resisting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on their sacred land even before Trump took office 10 ) the surveillance and state repression that members of the movement may face must be counted among the unjust impacts of Trump's Paris decision.
Prolonging slow and unambitious global climate action
At first glance, a potentially obvious pathway for harm is the possibility that U.S. withdrawal might trigger a domino effect leading others to exit the agreement. While this remains a possibility, at present, U.S. withdrawal appears to have instead emboldened countries to reaffirm their commitment to the Agreement, as occurred at the July 2017 G20 Summit. 11
Nevertheless, real action remains shaky. A March 2017 report showed that “only three countries in Europe push in the right direction to deliver on the Paris climate agreement”: Sweden, Germany, and France. 12 An August 2017 piece in Nature is even more stark: “Beyond US President Donald Trump's decision in June to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a more profound challenge to the global climate pact is emerging. No major advanced industrialized country is on track to meet its pledges.” 13 Government support for fossil fuels remains high. Between 2013 and 2015, annual public finance for energy from G20 institutions and multilateral banks reached $US72B for fossil fuel development; spending on renewables amounted to only a fraction of that at $US19B. 14 Subsidies for fossil fuels in 2015 are estimated to stand at a massive US$5.3T (6.5% of global gross domestic product) when taking into account governments' failure to adopt policies to make fossil fuel prices reflect their environmental costs. 15
It is this mire the world must now rapidly emerge from. If McKibben's assessment quoted at the outset of this article is correct that any “hope” of Paris lies in the signals it sends to governments and capital markets that the world is coordinating action on climate change, those signals will need to remain strong and as consistent as possible. In this context, even though the United States may not yet be inspiring others to abandon Paris, Trump's decision risks prolonging the period in which global climate action remains slow to ramp up by raising uncertainties about the future climate policy commitments of the world's largest economy. Trump's exit from Paris thus opens a pathway of harm for communities who may in the future face the effects of climate change that could have been avoided by more rapid decarbonization.
Extending a callous political worldview to climate efforts
A prerequisite for advancing justice—climate, environmental, or otherwise—is the recognition that (1) the well-being of other people matters, and that (2) this can create duties for those in a position to preserve or promote that well-being. Trump appears to espouse beliefs contemptuous and suspicious of these notions—what we might refer to as a callous political worldview.
While long a part of the U.S. political landscape, Trump's election to the highest political office has raised the prominence and legitimacy of this worldview in the mainstream. His election campaign was characterized by inflammatory rhetoric against refugees, immigrants, Muslims, women, and others—rhetoric that ultimately energized his base. His political ascent validated the xenophobic and often violent worldview held by some of the groups mobilized by that campaign, even emboldening some to harass or carry out attacks on minorities, or join hate groups. 16
In office, Trump's policy efforts have been guided by that callous political worldview, as exemplified most prominently through his attempts to institute a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries and his active support for dismantling the Affordable Care Act, which would strip millions of Americans of health insurance. 17
In this context, Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, his most prominent assertion of hostility to climate efforts thus far, provided an occasion to extend this worldview to climate change and validate the views of those allied Republicans and members of his base hostile to government climate action. Not only did the decision loudly signal that Washington will not be considering global collective efforts to preserve the well-being of people and the planet to be among its responsibilities, it was also announced in a way that suggested taking on those responsibilities opens the United States to exploitation.
Trump's gross mischaracterization of the terms of the Paris Agreement, the effect it would have on the U.S. economy and sovereignty, and the logic behind it 18 served as an attempt to recast the agreement as an international scheme to take advantage of the United States. As he put it, Paris “is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries,” one that “handicaps the United States economy to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense.” 19 Trump's base and his allied Republican politicians were thus presented with a reactionary slant by which to understand and resist future government climate efforts.
The callous worldview that Trump has validated and mainstreamed, and now extended to climate change, is inimical to a moment where the United States holds unmet responsibilities of climate justice—responsibilities that could include, among others, very rapid emission reductions, significant resource transfers to vulnerable communities locally and in developing countries, and opening borders to those impelled to migrate due to climate change. 20
Over the coming years, struggles such as those will now need to be won against the backdrop of the ascent of a worldview suspicious of and openly hostile to U.S. participation in collective efforts to promote the global good. To the extent that this worldview leads to the struggles for policies of climate justice being resisted, lost, or watered down (along with the good they would have done), this constitutes a pathway by which climate justice communities will be negatively affected.
Lost time for adaptation
Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government delivered US$1B of a pledged US$3B to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the newly operating multilateral fund intended to transfer financing to developing countries for climate mitigation and adaptation projects. 21 This was the largest amount committed of any country. However, Trump used the declaration of the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement as an opportunity to announce he would also be rescinding the remaining US$2B to the Fund, a large blow to an organization that had managed to raise only US$10B in pledges (following an initial goal of US$15B during early resource mobilization efforts 22 ).
Contributing to this callous worldview, Trump insisted contributions to the GCF under Obama had been “funds raided out of America's budget for the war against terrorism” and part of a “scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States.” 23
Without serious emission reductions, 100 million additional people could find themselves in poverty by 2030; global crop yields could fall by a devastating 20% by 2080 24 global sea levels could rise by 1 m by 2100, 25 in addition to other severe consequences. 26 There is thus a crucial need for effective adaptation projects to quickly take root in the most vulnerable regions; these are years that people on the frontlines of climate change cannot afford to lose.
Trump's decision to strip the fund of $US2B at such a moment holds potentially severe consequences for communities who might otherwise have benefited from funding for adaptation projects that could protect their property, resources, health, and even lives. It also occurs in a larger global context where serious questions surround the approach developed countries are taking toward providing adaptation funding, which is supposed to reach US$100B per year by 2020. Much of it is being given in the form of loans or export credits rather than grants, and it is unclear how much of it actually goes toward adaptation projects or is additional to what was already being provided through official development assistance. 27
Conclusion
I have argued that Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement opens up at least four possible pathways of harm to be wary of. At the same time, it is important to recognize that there is much else to global and U.S. climate politics beyond Trump. In addition to the G20 countries that rallied to the Paris Agreement in the immediate wake of Trump's decision, a large number of U.S. states, cities, and businesses also reaffirmed their commitment to the agreement's goals. 28 California, which is aiming to reduce emissions 40% below 1990s levels by 2030, among the most aggressive mitigation goals in the developed world, signed a deal with China to continue to work toward Paris targets. These were important reminders of the forces within the United States pushing for climate action against Trump's rule. The United States is also home to a vibrant democratic climate movement, one that has already seen the birth of the rapidly growing fossil fuel divestment movement, the 400,000-strong People's Climate March in 2014, and multiple major resistance campaigns against pipelines (Keystone XL and Dakota Access being the most prominent). Important litigation is also taking place, for example, the efforts of the Children's Climate Trust, a group of U.S. youth, currently in the process of suing the U.S. government to act on climate change. In the wake of climate-related disasters such as the superhurricanes and wildfires experienced by the United Sates in the latter half of 2017, new and urgent possibilities for political alliances have opened up. The task will not be easy; they will need to overcome a U.S. mainstream media largely uninterested in climate change, a still-politically powerful fossil fuel industry, a Republican Party embracing climate change denial, and a Republican base energized by Trump. Coming months and years will determine whether new alliances can close the pathways of harm identified here or even bring to power a future political leadership that can attempt to correct for them and move toward targets surpassing the ambitions of Paris.
Footnotes
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.