Trump’s vow to scrap the Paris climate change accord faces skepticism from corporations and GOP moderates
By Evan Halper
15 February 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – Trashing the Paris Agreement made for a great campaign prop at Donald Trump’s rallies, where the climate change accord was portrayed as a product of the out-of-touch, insufferable elites that Trump pledged to sweep from power. Now the landmark agreement, signed under President Obama, is fast becoming a nuisance for President Trump’s White House. It is putting the president under increasing pressure from places he may not have expected. His own secretary of State appears to see little upside in the president following through on the signature campaign vow to scrap it. His ambassador to the United Nations is hedging. And titans of industries that Trump promised would be unleashed to create new jobs once freed from the agreement’s constraints are openly hostile to Trump’s plan to put it through the shredder. Even the American Coal Council has yet to muster a tepid cheer for Trump’s denunciations of the United Nations-sponsored climate plan. As for the power companies Trump warned would be forced by Paris to raise their rates trillions of dollars? Their trade group, the Edison Electric Institute, doesn’t even have a position on the agreement. The reticence toward Trump’s tough talk about the nearly 200-nation accord reflects how much has changed in perceptions of the global warming threat since the White House was last occupied by a president disdainful of international efforts to contain it. CEOs have grown more panicked about the impact global warming will have on business stability than the cost of confronting it. And it is not just Ben and Jerry’s types that have already invested a tremendous amount in redirecting their entire business model to account for climate. Outside the confines of Trump campaign rallies, the offices of a few free market think tanks and the tea party stalwarts in Congress, the broader consensus is that abandoning Paris won’t save trillions of dollars, as Trump promised, but hurt the economy. […] “This is directly related to our business,” said Gabriela Burian, director of global sustainable agriculture at Monsanto. “We need to provide solutions while farmers are facing climate change.” [more]
