President Donald Trump’s upcoming decision on whether to keep the United States engaged in the Paris climate accord sounds like an important moment. It’s being cast as a yea or nay decision: Stay in and show global leadership on an issue world leaders find important. Or get out and do what’s best for the U.S. economy.
But there might be a third way: Stay in, do nothing to harm the U.S. economy, and hope that trends and new technologies continue to drive down U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. And then declare victory.
Any sensible evaluation of whether America should remain in the Paris accords should include an assessment of the costs of staying. But there’s actually no cost to staying. The only cost would come from the implementation of policies that could harm the economy. And there’s a difference between the Paris agreement, which is a product of negotiation that establishes purely symbolic goals, and actual policy implementation, which would have real effects.
The Paris climate accord, negotiated under the Obama administration and signed by nearly 200 countries, is a voluntary document. Under it, countries set their own emissions goals and then figure out how to get there. And there’s no penalty for failing—just the supposed shame of falling short. The Obama administration agreed that the United States would cut 2005 emissions levels by between 26 percent and 28 percent by 2025. But if we don’t make that goal, there’s no real-world penalty.
Wouldn’t a president who believes himself to be a master salesman want to reap the publicity upside of remaining part of a major international agreement that has no concrete downside? In the G7 meetings last week European leaders lobbied Trump to stay in the Paris accords. He was noncommittal. On Saturday he tweeted that he would decide within a week.
Staying in the Paris accords should be especially tempting because the United States is already almost halfway toward reaching its self-imposed targets: Emissions fell 11.5 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The two biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions are electricity generation and transportation. On electricity, coal generation peaked in 2008 and has been trending down ever since, in large part because of the emergence of low-cost sources of energy. Coal production last year was the same as it was in 1977, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. On transportation, automakers have committed to ever-more-stringent fuel economy standards—an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. And the market for hybrid and electric vehicles is expected to grow.
When the Paris accords were negotiated in 2015, opponents worried about the costs of implementation to the U.S. economy. The Heritage Foundation, for example, said the Paris accord would result in “devastating economic costs, (and) essentially zero economic benefits”—including the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and higher energy costs. But that analysis was based largely on implementing President Obama’s proposals to freeze out coal, make manufacturing more expensive, and pressure Detroit to churn out fuel-efficient cars—plans that the Trump administration has already started scrapping.
In March, surrounded by miners and coal-industry executives, Trump signed an executive order taking steps to undo the Obama administration’s “Clean Power Plan.” Also in March, Trump ordered a review of fuel-economy standards, with an eye toward making them less restrictive.
So what are Trump’s options? Superficially, the two sides would seem to be:
(1) Stay in the Paris accords and demonstrate a serious commitment to climate change. This is what environmentalists and many European leaders would like, but it would require Trump to reverse himself and adopt the Obama stances on coal, fuel economy, and manufacturing. That’s a bad deal and not likely to happen.
(2) Pull out of the Paris accords. This would fulfill a campaign promise but would deeply disappoint our European allies. It would show independence, but it’s hard to see much of a political upside, other than demonstrating definitively that the United States won’t subordinate its economic interests to global aims.
But there’s the third way: Trump could stay in the Paris agreement but continue to pursue policies that are better for America’s economy. Perhaps he could combine this choice with some creative approaches that nominally decrease emissions, such as taking credit for American ingenuity in unleashing a shale-gas revolution that has lessened dependence on coal. And instead of mandates on businesses, Trump could encourage market-based solutions that draw on new technologies. Maybe this compromise approach would hit the emissions goals. Maybe it wouldn’t. Then again, there were no guarantees with the Obama approach, either.
Such a strategy would be criticized by Trump’s base as a flip-flop, but he’s already backed off aggressive campaign rhetoric when met with diplomatic realities (as with China) and has stayed with bad multilateral agreements he dislikes (as with Iran). There are times when it’s smart to take a stand. And there are times when paying respect to the goals of others is important if it means achieving higher objectives, such as terrorism, Syria, and ISIS.
Over the weekend, some Trump advisers seemed to be favoring this triangulation approach, perhaps combined with a renegotiation of U.S. emissions targets to lower the (arbitrarily set) goals. Top economics adviser Gary Cohn said Trump’s views are “evolving.” As he put it: “You get into the whole discussion on Paris, is it non-binding, is it not non-binding, can you change your levels, how easy is it to change your levels.”
And the truth is, the left probably wants Trump to leave the Paris accords, rather than pursue a third-way. “I worry that letting the United States just stay in the agreement and do whatever it wants could show how weak Paris is,” Luke Kemp of Australian National University told the New York Times on Saturday. “It sends the message that the agreement is more about symbolism than action.”
But of course the Paris accords are more about symbolism than action. And President Trump staying in them while pursuing America’s economic interests would simply expose that—while pulling out would contribute to the illusion that they’re somehow a real, binding agreement.
All in all, sticking with a toothless climate agreement and acknowledging it as such would be an eminently sensible solution.
