We won’t know what Trump’s take on the Paris agreement is till this afternoon, but here are some alternative takes.
I welcome pulling out of the Paris agreement because it will disrupt our complacency and strengthen the most vigorous avenues of climate action left to us, which are through the courts and direct citizen action. It lends much more credence to the Our Children’s Trust legal argument that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to consider the long-term impact of carbon emissions. It advances the arguments of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in their federal lawsuit for the right to a livable climate. And it strengthens the case for climate activists attempting to raise the “necessity defense” as a justification for citizen climate action, as I and my fellow “valve turners” are doing as we face criminal charges for shutting off emergency valves on oil sands pipelines.
It’s also true that withdrawal from Paris deprives mainstream environmental organizations and the foundations and funders that guide them of a key deliverable, and that could risk eroding support for them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Many of them have pursued an utterly bankrupt strategy of understating the climate problem, negotiating with the fossil fuel industry, and cherry-picking small victories to showcase organizational accomplishments at the expense of a functional movement strategy.
Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement. So as committed climate activist who knows we’re running out of time, I say, let’s get on with it.
Ken Ward is a former deputy director of Greenpeace going on trial next week on felony charges for shutting down an oil sands pipeline to prevent harm to the climate.
Important to recognize that just saying “we’re pulling out” does not make it so.
Meanwhile, the momentum behind the agreement is overwhelmingly moral and economic, not legal. So tearing up the contract does not make it go away.
It’s vital to see what a turning point Paris was: The first time the leaders of all humanity chose an ecological future for our planet.
Yes, Paris is insufficiently ambitious. Yes, it lacks teeth.
It is, nonetheless, a landmark agreement.
The cheers in Paris at the signing of the Paris Agreement were also the death knell of fossil fuels.
That’s what agreeing to 2º means.
Y’know who’s super-clear about that?
Oil investors.
They know boldly pursuing 2º would mean never developing another oil field, again.
They know that 2º means shutting down coal plants, blocking pipelines, refusing new extraction, ending massive dirty energy subsidies
They also know it means that their holdings are worth a fraction of what they’re claiming—what finance experts call The Carbon Bubble. Continue reading “Is Paris Burning?”