THE USA LEAVING THE PARIS CLIMATE TREATY
VIEW: Mahima R. Poojari
As we all know, with the Trump government coming into power in the United States of America everything seems to be uncertain. The worlds’ big brother might as well throw all its fellow countries in the ocean in order to become the strongest country in this world. Trump lived exactly up to his expectations when he pulled The USA out of the PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD. His decision was not only criticized by his own people but by the entire world. So what made Trump do what he did?
Well, before he came into power as the President he did promise to pull The USA out of the agreement and he did just that. Apparently, the terms of the Paris Agreement were unfair to his country. He claims that while several other countries, like India and China contribute the most to pollution in the world, they have got nothing to do until 2030, and the USA will have to bring its emissions under control by 2020. That is however, not the case, and it’s just in defense of Trump’s actions.
While he may have found some support in his country, most sensible people are against it. His decision is being called “irresponsible” and “callous”, which is to say the least. He claims to be “protecting” his nation but in reality has dismissed the health, safety and economic wellbeing of the Americans. The USA is also more vulnerable and will be forced to diminish its world dominance. Global leadership also stands affected as the secretary of state of the US warned against leaving the Paris deal.
Other than Syria, which is in the middle of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which argues that the deal doesn’t go far enough to curb global emissions, The USA is the only other country which has opted out of the Paris treaty, that too, without a legitimate reason.
Despite being the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Trump says that the agreement hurts their economy, while US is just more vulnerable to climate change after this move. The Paris Treaty is not even one where the countries are forced to meet their emission targets. It’s a non-binding; no enforcement mechanism. This decision is also going to make other International negotiations more challenging for the US. China will look forward to filling the leadership role that the US is vacating.
To conclude, I think that the president of the United States of America has made a huge mistake withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, even forgetting the climate change issues. It’s only going to radiate bad impacts with respect to the US standing on all other international issues. The USA will also face a massive global diplomatic backlash and permanently hand over worldwide leadership on climate and renewable energy issues to China.
COUNTERVIEW: Bharat Pratap
When President Donald Trump decided to opt out of the Paris agreement, he was just fulfilling one of the many pledges he had made during his campaign. Divisive would be an understatement, as the backlash received for this decision was monumental. All hate was undeviating and directed towards him. However when one comes to think about this, the intricacies looming around this decision become quite obvious.
The treaty was extremely expensive; it would reduce hundreds of thousands of jobs and would destroy about $2.5 trillion in GDP for USA by the year 2035. The terms and conditions of the treaty stated that all countries must update their commitments every five year, beginning in the year 2020. The previous white house office administration of Ex-President Obama’s stated that their emission of greenhouse gases would be steady and cumulative resulting in an 80 percent growth in the future.
The decision to advance with the pact was solely Obama’s doing as he would not consult the United States congress and would relegate their opinions and their views on the matter. This highlights the fact that he knew why it might not have gotten through, which means that this was only something merely symbolic, but would come to no avail and would have proceeded to anger people. If USA was still part of this, it was bound to happen and people would be enraged to see how much of the taxed money was being poured into this. By 2020 almost 100 billion every year would be collected from all nations.
Obama would end up giving one billion of the taxpayers’ money every year to this fund again without the appropriate authorization of the US congress. Pushing aside the diplomatic matters, how did the other countries in the pact perform in terms of emissions? Germany has seen an increase in carbon emissions for the past two years, China agreed to reduce its emissions by 2030, just around the time when their development will be peaking and this would have happened nonetheless. India made no commitments, but pledged for efficiency of the use of resources, but performed only at half of the efficiency as they had promised. And Pakistan offered a page stating that they would reduce their emissions once they reached their “peak levels” as quick as possible. All, taking advantage of USA’s leniency.
USA’s exit from the treaty would open up more jobs; especially for coal labour which has been a big problem as unemployment has skyrocketed in that sector. This now, is a good opportunity for the current administration as they can try finding means to provide jobs and aid to their own citizens, other individuals and the world without swimming too deep into the taxed money of their country, and this would bring about a good practical change for the world instead of being part of sham like the Paris treaty.
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