President of the United States Donald Trump took the final decision to withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted in 2015 by 195 countries. Thus, Trump fulfilled one of his campaign promises, which is likely to be positively assessed by his electorate and many representatives of the American industry. The decision of the American president on the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was not surprising, if you carefully read the draft budget presented by the new administration this March. In particular, it envisages termination of payments to the UN climate programs and payments to various climate funds.
The document also provides for a reduction in NASA budget - moreover, the projects of the organization dealing with climate change will be curtailed. It is proposed to completely close the NASA's Office of Education, which, incidentally, produced materials for schoolchildren on climate change. It is also planned to cut state programs to launch and maintain space satellites, through which NASA receives important data on the planet's weather patterns. The Trump administration also proposes to close the US Department of Energy's Arpa-E agency, which is engaged in renewable energy and environmentally-friendly vehicle researches. At the same time, the new US president, during his time in office, had already significantly weakened the strict environmental requirements imposed on industry by his predecessor Barack Obama. In this respect, Trump's announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was not a surprise. It would be a surprise if he changed his mind, refusing the realization of his pre-election promise.
In fact, the decision announced by Donald Trump on June 1 is symbolic. The matter is that in the framework of the Paris Agreement on climate change the countries did not assume any responsibility in case of violation of the agreement points. As they say, help yourself by your own when you gonna get drowned, and efforts to preserve the ecological balance of the planet can be effective only if the world's largest countries are voluntary cooperate. The US could have terminated cooperation within the framework of the agreement without loud declarations, however, it was important for Donald Trump to make a political message to his constituents in difficult times for his presidency. "As long as Trump is in office, in principle, it does not matter whether the United States participates in the Paris agreement or not. Trump's government has made it clear that it is not interested in reducing environmentally harmful emissions," the Professor of Development Economics at the University of Göttingen, Stefan Klassen, recalls in a commentary for Die Welt. Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Joachim Schellnhuber, in turn, notes that the US will only harm itself by its decision. "China and Europe will become global leaders on the road to a clean and secure energy future, and strengthen their positions, while the US will roll back. It is noteworthy that the United States assumed the role of an outsider in the issue of the Paris Agreement, while Europe, Russia and China hold a common position.
The economic and environmental consequences of Trump's actions for the United States and the whole world will be seen only after many years. However, even now, there is no doubt that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has become another symbol of the country's alienation from its European allies, and, first of all, from Germany, with whom Trump's relations are far from being the best. The leaders of the three European heavyweights - Germany, France and Italy - have already announced that they are not going to accept the proposal of the US president to review the provisions of the Paris agreement, and will continue to adhere to it in the form in which it was adopted in December 2015. However, we should not forget that, according to the terms of the agreement, it is possible to withdraw from it only four years after the announcement - just as much until the end of Donald Trump's first presidential term. It does not change the fact that an environmental policy of the United States under Tramp will be subordinated to the interests of American industry, but also leaves the hope that the next administration will decide to return to compliance with the Paris Agreement before the country finally leaves it.
