Why would the US get sanctioned for leaving a non-binding treaty that was never formally ratified by the United States Senate. Trump has every constitutional right to remove the United States from a job killing deal that hurts the American economy. Really good move on Trump's part honestly.

Is it the moral thing to do? Absolutely. Is there the political will? Doubtful still the US seems hell bent on destroying the livable environment for everyone. The case for sanctions and war against the US is a whole lot stronger than it ever was against Iraq. By the Cheney doctrine, every nation on earth now has a justification to launch preemptive strikes against the US. That won't happen either


At most, the rest of the world will ignore any request from the Us and the US will be frozen out of the international order as a pariah state

@ND why did Russiaget sanctions for annexing Crimea? Because it was deemed to be in the national interest of the sanctioning countries.

International law is about what you can get away with, not who has signed which treaty... If ever other signatory of the Paris Agreement decided to stop biying American beef in retaliation, that would be well withon their power (Cows produce methane, so they could legitimately decide this was the best way to curb US emmissions). And the countries could say whatever they liked, but they would justify it to their people by claiming (correctly) that is was to protect the environment and was thus in the national interest...

@Ogion, pariah status would be far further than i can imagine; i wonder what WTO rules would say about it... Isually use to protect western trade interests...

Trump ought to remember the US is downwind from polluting China. Only a few years ago it was so bad that the clouds hadn't broken up before reaching the west coast. It doesn't just affect within the countries.

Ogion is just mad because he lost three contracts over this. so less bloodsucking off the government vein

@Orathaic: Sure. I suppose that hypothetical 'sanctioning communities' could put sanctions on the United States. However, they will also risk retaliation from the United States. This could mean us leaving mutual defense pacts like NATO (I guess they will have to start paying more than 2% at that point) or the United States stops subsidizing the United Nations (oops guess someone else will have to pay for that) or the United States issuing it's own sanctions on those countries... Be careful what you ask for.

Also the Paris Accords does nothing to protect the environment. It penalizes the United States economy and continues to let polluting nations like China and India ramp up their own carbon emissions for a set period of time. So, the world loses nothing with this deal in shambles.

Sanctions against the United States will never happen. The world will not do anything to negatively impact our economy, because the rule still is when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.

ND - I still think the Paris Accord would've been a net job gain for the US. Yes, it kills coal and some oil jobs, but replaces them with renewables jobs. I mean, if we were to seriously go to hit the mark, there would be vast, vast amounts of construction jobs created.

And countries like China and India can't just "stop" their emissions growth, ND. A huge chunk of China's emissions are industry and electricity generation. You can't just retool factories and build new power plants overnight. And in the meantime the energy needs and the industrial output will both grow. It's perfectly reasonable for the accords to allow for limited emissions growth in industrializing nations.

@ND, economic retaliation is exactly what i would expect. Maybe a but of tit-for-tat strategy coming into play, and the global economy shrinking a little bit (at least in certain industries) - if the sanctions (and retaliation) were targeted at specific polluting industries (i just suggested beef because it is probably the most polluting meat source, but i'm not an expert on this issie, so that is a guess); we could actually see giant leaps in greenhouse gas reductions.

Alas, i suspect goldfinger is right, the fact that OPEC still sells all oil in USD making the USD the world's reserve currency, not only makes printing USD (which only Congress can do, through whatever private banking system it uses) less inflationary - because there is always demand for a safe currency to invest in (and safety is the whole point of buildin up a reserve). It also means none of those countries using the USD want to see the US economy fail to grow (can't have the US fail to pay off their debts..).

Again, hitting something (comparatively) small, but targetted, like beef, would he an excellent start. It would also negin to decouple the food industry, making individual regions more secure in their food sources.

I guess it will take more than the Paris agreements to push world leaders to punish the US; they might be smart to quietly sell of their USD before oil become an insignifigant source of energy (if we have already hit peak oil, then the decrease in volume sold globally will - probably in the next 50 year - quietly drop off the map).

Also this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/

5 Bad Reasons to Ditch the Paris Climate Agreement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WKoj-kodBw

http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/jrc-2016-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2016-report-103425.pdf

USA seems to be going in the right direction, the people who really need to be taken to the sword are the Chinese. they're over doubling our current CO2 output, and show much less initiative to decrease their emissions.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/progress-u-s-carbon-emissions-decline/

In response to the title. Trumps' father didn't.

It isn't about the reality of a warming globe due to human activity. It's not about jobs, China, carbon emissions, or anything else. Whether you think pulling out is good or bad for the American economy is immaterial to the decision.

Trump: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America's interests."

Republicans want to win the next election.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/pittsburgh-mayor-donald-trump/index.html

Pittsburgh overwhelmingly voted against Trump and wants the accord to clean up the air. Trump isn't serving the citizens of Pittsburgh.