Harrison Gold Blog Post 4

Harrison Gold

POLS170

Blog 4

 

Why did President Trump withdraw from the Paris Accord?

 

In early November, I watched President Obama address the International Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. He referred to President Trump’s administration, pertaining to their attitude and policies on global warming, as “four years of active hostility”. Like most people, I kept thinking, “why would a US President, with complete access to overwhelming scientific evidence regarding the dangers of global warning, virtually deny its perils and create policies which ignore the imminent danger that global warming has on the Unites States, as well as the rest of the world. 

It is clear that the United States is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, yet this President Trump was, for the most part, ignoring science and not creating policies to combat this serious problem that the science community has been warning us about for many years.  

Presidents have a very difficult jobs and have to be accountable to many people.  Often, tough choices have to be made and not everyone will agree with the final decisions.  When President Trump withdrew from the Paris Accord, he told the world that he did so for four main reasons; Firstly, he explained that participating in the Paris Account would cost million of U.S. jobs.  President Trump ran on being a “jobs” president and, for better or worse, he believed that the job implications of the Paris Accord was averse to his platform.  In addition, while not supported by actual science, he explained that following the Paris Accord guidelines would do little to decrease the extent of global warming. In other words, he explained that the negatives would greatly outweigh the “minor” benefits of complying with the accord.  In addition, Trump also stated that the economic impact of the U.S. participating in the Paris Accord would cost our country $3 Trillion in lost GDP, which also included an meaningful impact in industrial jobs and household income.  Lastly, he stated that “adhering to the goals set in the Paris Accord, our country will be at grave risk to brownouts and blackouts”. This particular reason was widely denounced by the scientific community.  In fact, all of President Trump’s explanations have been widely criticized and, in my opinion, and his policies were solely implemented for political reasons, as I believed our president sacrificed the good of the world for political gain.  This seems to be a common behavior of President Trump. During his address at COP26, President Obama tried to encourage the international community to work together on climate change.  He, and other current U.S. leadership apologized from the policies and behavior President Trump’s administration – and made it clear that the U.S. is now serious again about combatting global warming. President Obama also called on the younger generation to only vote for those that take climate change seriously and take personal responsibility for their actions and keep global climate in mind when making day to day choices. I couldn’t agree more!

Comments

  1. pols170 claire doyle blogDecember 6, 2021 at 7:30 PM

    I enjoyed reading your response and you adding your personal opinions in this topic! It is so interesting to compare how different presidents have handled global warming issues. President Trump definitely had a much different outlook in how the US aids to global warming than prior and future presidents do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keri GilliganDecember 10, 2021 at 1:19 PM

    I think the topic of climate change is so interesting, and the fact that it is controversial is astounding to me. If anything, I think it should be the one area where leaders and citizens of the world can unite since it is something that it going to be affecting all of us very shortly if we do not do anything. I am curious to see how President Biden's presidency differs from President Trump's approach and if we are going to see a statistical difference here.

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