The Paris Agreement is a legally binding commitment
entered into by 113 countries to abide by the same rules in regard to
protecting the environment and controlling the level of toxic emissions. This
crucial Agreement was ratified in Marrakesh last month.
The U.S. President Elect, Donald Trump, is someone
who believes in making his own rules. In
spite of the U.S signing up, Mr Trump is threatening to pull the United States
out of the Paris climate deal. He has
appointed as Head of his Environmental Protection Agency a man – Myron Ebell –
who claims, like Trump himself, that climate change is a hoax created by the
Chinese! The good news is that it would
take Trump four years to extricate America from the deal. There would also be a huge political and
social backlash if he were to try to push through his climate change denial
agenda. The only way he could speed up
breaking up the Agreement would be to lead the United States out of the United
Nations. This would make America a rogue
state so even Trump might regard this as a step too far! He has begun to hint that he would ‘Keep an
open mind’ about the Paris Accord. That
is mighty decent of him. Let us hope
that he is good at rowing backwards. In
any case he would need to get the support of both Houses of Congress before
pulling America out of the Accord. But
undoubtedly there is a lot of support for exploiting American reserves of
fossil fuel. Maybe we might hear the
view of the Conference of Bishops of the United States on these matters. Or maybe we might not! Most Catholics who voted in the American
Presidential election voted for Trump.
