On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will officially pull out of the much ballyhooed Paris Climate Accord, which is actually a treaty signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016 without Senate approval.
Standing in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump said, “I am fighting every day for the great people of this country; therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty … the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, but begin negations to reenter, either the Paris Accord, or an entirely new transaction.”
“So, we’re getting out,” Trump reiterated.
The president explained that if we negotiate a “fair” deal and reenter, “that’s great; if we can’t, that’s fine.”
Trump said the accord, as it stands now, would hurt Americans to the benefit of other countries, labeling it a redistributor of wealth from the United States to other nations. He added that the deal would be a job-killer for America, shipping coal jobs to other nations.
“I was elected to serve the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” said Trump.
Trump also railed on the Green Climate Fund, which he said redistributes America’s wealth to other nations, who will likely “never pay one dime” at the expense of the accord.
American sovereignty was also a key issue. Trump argued that leaders from across the world should not have more say in the American economy than American citizens and their elected officials.
“It is time to make America great again,” closed the president.
Trump’s move is a clear rebuke of globalism and a fulfillment of his “America First” mantra uttered continuously throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, Trump explicitly promised he would “cancel” the deal.
“We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payment of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs,” said then-candidate Trump.
Trump made the decision in the face of pressures from numerous lobbyists and even from some of those on his own team, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
While Climate Change zealots have widely praised the agreement as the savior of the Earth, the accord would actually do very little to affect our allegedly warming temperatures while putting a strain on the American economy. By United Nations calculations, “there would only be a 0.3 degree decline in temperature over the next century, meaning that global warming would only be postponed for ‘less than four years,'” if all nations were to abide by the accord, which will certainly not happen.
Trump also mentioned the ineffectiveness of the accord in his rebuke of the agreement.
A total of 195 countries have signed on to the Paris Climate Accord; Nicaragua, Syria, and now the U.S. are not part of the accord.
The full exit from the agreement will reportedly be a lengthy process, possibly taking even up to four years, meaning there may be a new president occupying the Oval Office by the time America is officially out of agreement.