White House divided on future of Paris climate agreement
By
Daniel de Vries
19 April 2017
Debate is raging within the Trump administration over whether to carry through on the president’s campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate change accord. Both camps are offering reactionary prescriptions in order to ensure that immediate corporate profit interests remain unimpeded by any genuine effort to confront the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change.
Trump aides abruptly canceled a meeting of top advisors scheduled for Tuesday, at which officials hoped to arrive at a consensus approach toward the Paris accord. Trump will reportedly decide the future of US involvement in the pact in advance of next month’s G7 summit in Italy.
The Paris agreement, inked in December 2015, requires the more than 190 signatory countries to submit voluntary goals for slowing the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Defenders of the pact often hail it as the capstone achievement of Barack Obama’s environmental agenda. French President Francois Holland at the time called it “a major leap for mankind.” While former prime minister of Britain David Cameron triumphantly proclaimed, “We’ve secured our planet for many, many generations to come.”
Yet the discussions inside the Trump administration—led by a man who has tweeted that global warming is a concept “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”—explode that myth that Paris was any sort of landmark agreement to forestall climate change.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are the leading voices advocating for the US to remain a party to the agreement. Tillerson, the former CEO of…