Local Power in the Paris Climate Deal

Kevin Oyakawa

1/24/18

Local Power in the Paris Climate Deal

On June 1, 2017, President Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, a decision that put the United States in the same company as Syria. The Paris climate accord, signed by 196 countries across the world, seeks to reduce man-made emissions worldwide to combat climate change. The United States’ decision to pull out of this deal is one of many deals where President Trump has shown his isolationist tendencies, including his rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his disdain for the Iran Nuclear Deal. The decision to reject the climate deal should not have blind-sided the American public; on the contrary, voters should have known what kind of policies President Trump would attempt to push forward. Trump is a president that appointed Scott Pruitt, an outspoken climate change critic, as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indicating his belief that the root of climate change is not from man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. In the past, President Trump was known to be a climate change denier, dating back to a Tweet from 2012 in which our president stated that global warming was created by the Chinese to compete with U.S. manufacturing. With climate change being a contentious topic, and with Republicans holding a unified government, who are generally less-than-friendly with environmental issues, the question of how we respect the rights and opinions of the minority has to be brought up.

We normally do not witness local and state governments participating in U.S. foreign policy, as these policies usually are not relevant to the issues they address. However, in response to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a plethora of states, cities, municipalities, etc, have gone on to individually commit to the international climate agreement. This is a phenomenon that is not seen very often in our foreign policy, which makes this even more effective as a political move. On the international scene, the deviation by local governments away from the President’s stance shows that there is divide within our country from the seemingly erratic and senseless foreign policy initiatives President Trump is pursuing, indicating to the international community that the United States is not entirely turning its back on the world’s climate and perhaps offering hope that the next-in-line would be willing to rethink our initiatives regarding climate change.

While local and state governments are very limited in their capacity to change any foreign policy, actions such as releasing press releases, social media postings, etc raise awareness for the issue and represent the dissenting opinion within the United States. Along with that, as recent as January 10, 2018, President Trump made another announcement regarding the international climate deal, stating that a deal that was not a “bad deal” for the U.S. could lead to back in the climate accord. This could be a response to the domestic pressure he has received for his decision both from local and state governments along with players across both aisles criticizing him, showing the power of local governance in our political system, another testament that the phrase “think globally, act locally” rings true for United States citizens.