Pulling out of Paris Climate Agreement not the end

Other forces stepping up and one guy or cult cannot stop progress

Successful Climate activists in New York. Credit: Jake Bolster/ Inside Climate News

It wasn’t surprising that one of the first actions Trump took was to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and begin unravelling a host of environmental protections. Anyone paying attention knew the new regime was going to escalate the assault on nature.

I want to offer a bit of perspective that might be useful to those who care about the climate crisis and the health of this planet and, therefore, are deeply concerned about what we’re getting from the new regime.

First, the Paris Climate Agreement is largely symbolic. The entire time it has been in existence, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Last year, while the U.S. was still a participating member of the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions hit a record high. And, under the Biden administration, the U.S. opened up record levels of oil and gas permitting and drilling. The frustrating truth is no U.S. federal administration has taken effective action to genuinely address climate change.

Similarly, international agreements and climate talks have failed to deliver meaningful results. That said, significant progress has been made at the state level. When I was serving as First Lady of Oregon, my partner, Governor John Kitzhaber and I reinvigorated an initiative called the Pacific Coast Collaborative. With this initiative, the governments of California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia came together to create a strong subnational, regional climate and clean energy policy and action plan. Since 2008 the economy in this region has grown significantly, while greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by an estimated 10%.

Another multi-state coalition on the East Coast, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) developed the country’s first regional cap-and-invest system for reducing carbon emissions from power generation. It has been providing benefits to member states for nearly twenty-years.

City leadership is also making progress. Nearly 350 mayors have formed the Climate Mayors organization working collaboratively to address climate change issues in their communities. In recent years a number of cities have joined the Pacific Coast Collaborative.

These subnational coalitions have proven powerful enough that they are now regular participants in international climate negotiations whether or not the country in which they are located is a participant.

All of these states and the mayors have vowed to keep moving forward to reduce climate change emissions despite what the person in the White House might be doing.

In addition to governments, regular ol’ citizens are making progress. Last month climate activists in New York staged a “die-in” at the capital to encourage New York Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act, which will force fossil fuel companies to pay an estimated $75 billion over 25 years into a fund for addressing the impacts of climate change.

The action kicked off Dec. 10. With youth activists leading the charge. For two successive days, hundreds of activists participated in the action outside Hochul’s office. As arrests started being made, older activists took the positions because they knew there would be fewer consequences for them getting arrested than for a younger person.

On Dec. 26, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul bowed to the activists’ demands and signed the Climate Change Superfund Act.

And here’s another interesting note, despite the new regime clamoring about an “energy emergency” and spewing the “drill baby drill” culture war cry, even oil and gas companies are saying that with the record amount of drilling already underway they don’t have plans for expansion. Clearly, Big Oil execs are not trustworthy but they are predictable. They’re in it for profit and currently it’s not profitable for them to do much expansion.

On top of that renewable energy is beyond the point of stopping now and renewables far outpace fossil fuel for new electricity generation. In fact, according to the Energy Information Agency, U.S. power generation growth will be led mostly by new solar power additions over the next two years. Meanwhile, 6% of coal generating capacity will be removed this year as coal plants are retired. A bunch of red states are making a lot of money and generating a lot of good paying jobs through renewable energy and even they are likely to back away from those benefits.

I suspect Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement largely to throw a bone to the MAGA base and to piss-off environmentalists. As an unchecked capitalist and anti-science billionaire elitist he has a knee-jerk disdain for environmentalists and environmental regulation. There is no doubt this regime will do harm (on many fronts). I’m not saying it’s going to be easy but I wanted to remind us all that we are not powerless. The movement toward a saner way of being on this glorious small planet cannot be stopped by any one person.

Find your passion, your niche and use your time, talents, treasure however you can to keep building toward something better. Remember, hope is not about ignoring the dark things that are happening. It’s not about stuffing down the hurts. Hope is trusting that these dark times won’t last forever and that there is even a possibility that all of this may become a catalyst to genuine, deep, much-needed change.