In June, as President Trump spoke about withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, he indicated that he would be open to renegotiating the deal for terms more favorable to this country.
Initially, it appeared that the other signatories of the international agreement would not agree to new negotiations. However, Trump’s remarks in France on the heels of the G20 economic summit indicates the political climate may have changed.
Donald Trump has opened the door to a reversal of his decision on the Paris Agreement on climate change saying that “something” could happen regarding the deal during his trip to France for Bastille Day.Mr. Trump withdrew the US from the global climate agreement which nearly 200 countries signed in December 2015 in an effort to combat global warming and help poorer countries adapt to an already-changed planet. He said it puts American workers, particularly in the coal industry, at an “economic disadvantage”.“If it happens that will be wonderful and if it doesn’t that will be ok too,” Mr Trump said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, appearing to leave the matter open-ended. “We’ll see what happens,” he added.
Meanwhile, the French President Emmanuel Macron was quite conciliatory.
Macron said while the leaders have a “number of disagreements” on the threat of global warming, he respected Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the agreement….The two leaders’ meeting and subsequent news conference followed colorful pageantry that welcomed Trump for a two-day visit that includes dinner at the Eiffel Tower Thursday night and commemoration of Bastille Day — France’s Fourth of July — on Friday.During a news conference, Macron said he and Trump would work on a “joint roadmap” to fight terrorism and post-war initiatives for Syria.
A video of the Trump-Macron press conference in which the potential reversal of the climate accord withdrawal was mentioned has been posted by the PBS News Hour:
Yet, it will be difficult to reconcile Americans to cut back on coal…when the Chinese have plans to expand the world coal-fired power capacity by over 40 percent.
When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
So, I am inclined to think Trump’s decision will be “doesn’t happen“. However, in an effort to separate President Trump from his supporters, I predict that the American press will focus on the “something may happen”. Our press is nothing if not predictable when it comes to coverage of the White House.
Our withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord was one of the topics I covered as a guest on Canto Talk.
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