Why The U.S. Pulling Out Of The Paris Accord Was A Real Mistake

Introduction

Last week, President Trump followed through on one of his campaign promises – to pull out of the Paris Accord. Since he has been prevented from implementing several of his campaign promises, he was under pressure to follow through on at least one of them. The irony is that few of his core supporters had any idea of what the Paris Accord was and why the US was involved. Below I explain what the Accord is and why the US should not have pulled out.

Global Warming: A Primer

 a. Evidence of Warming

There is general agreement the earth is warming. And while temperatures can vary widely by year or region, data do support the warming hypothesis. NOAA has recorded 2015 as the hottest year since records began in 1880. The 16 warmest years ever recorded are also in the 1998–2015 period. 2015 was characterized by one of the strongest El-Niños and record warmth in the global oceans with an annually averaged temperature for ocean surface waters around the world that was 0.74 °C higher than the 20th century average.

b. Emissions

So the earth is getting warmer. The real policy question is whether man’s actions are part of the reason for it. The vast majority of scientists say yes, pointing to man-created growing CO₂ emissions as evidence of it.

Table 1 provides data on CO₂ emissions by country. The US was the leading emitter until China took over in the first decade of the 21^st Century. But there are some hopeful signs. Global emission growth has at least leveled off. And China’s emissions declined for the first time in 2015. China is working hard to reduce emissions for two reasons:

European countries have led the way in reducing emissions, down overall by 11% since 2010. The US, with rapidly growing and low cost natural gas supplies, has also lowered CO₂ emissions. The US and other countries with large fossil fuel reserves lead the list of countries with the largest emissions per capita.