The ideological leanings of U.S. President Donald Trump influence the political understanding of that state for many people. While his domestic matters are not my immediate concern, his political dualism in implementing various climate-related policies are cause for alarm. After I read John Conger’s recent piece in The Ripon Forum, I was confused. Conger is the Director of the Centre for Climate and Security and former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In his article, he explicitly mentions section by section where climate change impacts are visible. He notes that Congress created a provision in National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 that declared climate change to be a direct threat to national security and required the DoD to identify installations that were the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The President signed the bill into law in December of 2017.
While a realist understanding of international politics may justify America’s frugal stand of being pragmatic on issues of major international importance, it does not reconcile abandonment of the 2015 Paris Climate Change agreement. A recently published study in the journal Nature mentioned the economic benefits for the United States in achieving the Paris goals. Researchers Marshall Burke and Noah Diffenbaugh explained in The Hill that the co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for Americans could total as much as $6 trillion, if aiming for the most ambitious of targets. They estimated that there are additional “co-benefits”, such as the cleaner air from replacing coal-fired power plants or jobs that are added as a result of technological innovation. As a result of this and countless other studies, it is evident that the damages caused by climate change are much higher than the mitigation and adaptation expenses that will need to be taken to address it.
Trump claims that the agreement weighs heavily against U.S interests, which is a misnomer. Even if the argument is to support only the Trumpian policy of America First, they still have to be more accountable for the harm done to the environment over the centuries. Climate change has a global impact, as chaos theory anticipates, small changes in one part of the world system could bring major changes across the globe. The work of various climate scientists and the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (IPCC) have verified beyond most doubts the negative global repercussions of inaction.
In his speech at the White House last year, Trump mentioned negotiations which he claimed would be in the favor of Americans. As he proclaimed, “As president, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens. The Paris climate accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States, to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers, who I love, and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production.”
When the world is drowning in a global catastrophe, it is mythological to implement policies that could be of a domestic advantage. The political stand of developed states when it comes to taking the responsibility for their own past acts are doubtful, even if it is allocating money for the accepted negotiations or finding certain commitments which are necessary. To garner the domestic political support, climate change has been a soft target of American politics. This has resulted in reducing and renegotiating the funding for climate agreements and escaping from past commitments. It is naive to say that the Obama Administration didn’t approve of such dual politics, but it did rise to the occasion when it mattered. Obama, in a speech in commemorating Nelson Mandela reiterated the fact that climate change is real.
It’s time to act. As French President Emmanuel Macron campaigned in a rebuke to Trump, “Make Our Planet Great Again.”
The author is a research scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her major area of work is on Climate Change Policy.
