Trump has several ways to scuttle US climate pledges

President-elect could ignore emissions targets or even enlist the help of the supreme court.

American students protest outside the UN climate talks during the COP22 international climate conference in Marrakech in reaction to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election,on November 9, 2016. Fadel Senna / AFPShow less

DUBLIN // Less than a year after 195 countries negotiated a historic climate change agreement in Paris, the world’s second-largest polluter elected a president who has called global warming a hoax.

The US – which emits more carbon dioxide than any country except China – has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2025. President Barack Obama formally ratified the agreement in September, and it went into force on November 4.

But president-elect Donald Trump repeatedly signalled that he does not believe in human-induced climate change and intends to unwind his country’s commitments on that front.

“We’re going to cancel the Paris agreement,” Mr Trump promised at a campaign rally in May.

While experts say it could take his administration up to four years to do that, he could in the meantime still undermine world efforts against global warming.

According to a source on his transition team, the president-elect is considering ways to bypass the procedure for leaving the accord.

Mr Trump called climate change “a hoax” several times in speeches during 2014 and last year.

Although he claimed, in January, that he had been joking, he also said: “This is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change.”

In his final week of campaigning, Mr Trump said again: “We’re going to put America first. That includes cancelling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations.” That money, he suggested, would be put to better use in building American infrastructure.

Mr Obama had promised $800 million (Dh2.94bn) every year to finance poorer countries in their quest to adapt to climate change.

Before leaving on Sunday to join climate talks being held in Marrakech, Morocco, the US secretary of state John Kerry said the evidence for climate change was mounting.

“Until January 20, when this administration is over, we intend to do everything possible to meet our responsibility to future generations to be able to address this threat to life itself on the planet,” he said.

Tomas Wyns, a climate change researcher at the Institute for European Studies, said it was eminently within Mr Trump’s power as president to announce a US withdrawal from the Paris agreement. He would not even need to be backed by the two houses of the US legislature, which now have Republican majorities in any case.

“However, such a withdrawal can only happen three years after the agreement has entered into force, and it takes another year for the withdrawal to apply,” Mr Wyns said. “If president Trump notifies the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement on January 21, 2017, it will only be accepted in 2020 and be effective in 2021.”

“Of course, the US government can be completely in non-compliance with the agreement in the meantime, and ignore it.”

A faster way, he said, was for the US to withdraw altogether from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which coordinates international climate treaties.

“That withdrawal takes effect one year after notification.”

There are other ways in which Mr Trump could undermine US commitments to fighting global warming.

A study in the scientific journal Nature revealed in September that the US would miss its targets for emission reductions unless it put more stringent policies in place. Mr Trump could refuse to implement such policies.

Ignoring the commitments and targets might, in fact, be Mr Trump’s simplest way out, said Simone Tagliapietra, a climate change researcher at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, a Milan-based research institute.

“This will put the overall mechanism [of the Paris deal] at risk,” Mr Tagliapietra said. “Because if the US will not comply with targets, then other countries like China, India and other emerging economies might say: ‘Look, why we should do our homework while the US does not?’”

Mr Trump also has a judicial option.

Part of Mr Obama’s plan to cut US emissions involved drafting more stringent regulations for power plants. Dubbed the Clean Power Plan, it called for a 32 per cent cut in power-plant emissions between 2005 and 2030.

Across the US, dozens of lawsuits have sought to overturn these regulations. These cases may well make their way to the supreme court, which currently has eight out of nine justice positions filled. If Mr Trump names a conservative climate change sceptic as the ninth justice, he or she could help determine the fate of the Clean Power Plan.

“The effects of climate change are more visible and harsh than ever,” Mr Wyns said. “The urgency to deal with it has only become bigger. No US president can change that.”

* with additional reporting from Reuters

An earlier version of this article called the climate change researcher Simone Tagliapoetra, when his name is actually Tagliapietra. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, the organisation he works for, is based in Milan, not Venice.