Obama’s Decisions Doomed the Paris Climate Accord to Failure in the US, Experts Say
The Daily Caller covers President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. commitment from the Paris Climate Accord.
Blame former President Barack Obama for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, according to policy experts, as Obama’s decision to forgo Senate approval and bank on a Democratic win in 2016 made the agreement politically vulnerable.
“The Paris climate agreement was pushed through against the declared will of America’s elected representatives,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the UK-based Global Warming Policy Forum, said in a statement.
President Donald Trump announced Thursday he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord, however, some believe that Obama’s decisions to unilaterally impose global warming policies made Trump’s decision easier.
Obama joined the Paris accord in 2016, after years of working behind the scenes to craft the non-binding global warming deal, but he did so without submitting it to the Senate.
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“All the other major players in the Paris negotiations knew it was a crap shoot,” Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
U.S. credibility on meeting its Paris goal hinged, in part, on the courts. More than half the states were suing to overturn Obama’s signature global warming regulation, the Clean Power Plan. States were also suing over federal regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling.
“Two months before the signing ceremony in April 2016, they also knew the Supreme Court had taken the extraordinary step of staying the Clean Power Plan before the lower court had even reviewed it,” said Lewis, a vocal opponent of the Paris accord. He and his CEI colleague Chris Horner authored a policy paper, calling for U.S. withdrawal from Paris.
The Supreme Court’s decision to halt the implementation of the Clean Power Plan in February 2016 signaled to the Obama administration and supporters the global warming regulation on power plants could be in legal trouble.
Obama pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Clean Power Plan was the main compliance tool, but more policies were still needed to meet the pledge based on government and independent projections.
Clinton’s 2016 victory would have ensured the U.S. remained in the Paris Agreement, but any setback in the courts would have made keeping Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions even more difficult to achieve.
“The agreement was always first and foremost a political strategy to perpetuate Obama’s climate agenda for decades despite the policy preferences of future presidents, Congresses, and voters,” Lewis said.
Read the full article at The Daily Caller.
