The World Reacts to Trump's Paris Withdrawal

environmental policy issues with reporters, newsmakers, and experts. This week, we're doing something a little different and bringing you a podcast on a breaking news item that literally just happened a few moments ago. After much build up and hype, President Trump finally announced that he would withdraw the US from the Paris Climate change Agreement, but he also said he was open to re entering the agreement if its

terms were changed. To figure out what all of this means, we called up Eric Lyman, a Bloomberg BNA correspondent in Rome who's been covering international climate issues for years, and we started off by asking Eric, so does this mean the agreement is basically no. Other countries have said that they want to continue with the goals that they agree to as part of the Paris Agreement, but there's a worry that it will throw a wrench into the plan

the predecessor to the Paris Agreement with the Kyoto Protocol from nineteen eighty seven. The US fatasy stayed out of that and as a result, that Kyoto Protocol never had the sort of traction that it was expected to have, and the big worry is that the Paris Agreement may also suffer in that kind of a way. The US is the world's second largest the minder of greenhouse gases, behind China, the world's biggest economy, the world's biggest exporter, and so having the country on the sidelines is a

big deal. But the process is much more robust than it was back in two thousand and one when the United States pulls out of the Kyoto Protocol, so there are also hopes that some meaningful work will be able to go forward even without the US participating. It's also worth noting that the US, even though Donald Trump said that he wanted to withdraw right away, it will be

effective right away. The rules of it say that nobody can withdraw until three years after the agreement goes into effect, which was last November, and then once they indicate that the withdrawal is only effective a year later, so that basically would put the withdrawal of the United States formally right around the presidential elections in twenty twenty. So for

the time being, the US is still involved. It may not be a proactive participant, but know, the treaty is not dead, but it's taken a blow, So there's still time I guess to reconsider this between now and I

guess we're twenty nineteen. If Trump has changes his mind, yes, But the problem is is that, you know, the Obama administration had put in place a lot of mechanisms to try to rotchet down emissions and so on, and so even if the US has sort of sat on its hands for a year and then change his mind, it would be almost impossible for it to reach the goals that it had put in its Nationally Determined Contribution, which

was its goal. The US said it was going to reduce submissions by twenty six to twenty eight percent between twenty and five and twenty twenty five. It is more or less on pace to do that right now, but it wouldn't take long for that to become out of reach. And how do you think other countries will respond to this? And particularly I'm thinking of China and the major EU

countries Germany, France, the UK countries like that. Well, it's interesting you pick those specific examples, because tomorrow there's going to be a big announcement tomorrow Friday in Brussels about

a EU China climate accord. These two blocks seem, at least at first, to be as determined as effort to move things forward, and there's a lot of talk that with the US on the sideline, even before this announcement, the idea that the US is going to play a protagonist role in this process were greatly diminished after the election of President Trout last year, and that the vacuum, the power vacuum, where the influence vacuum the process would

be filled by China. China is being very aggressive and trying to generate more power from green and renewable energy sources. They're inspired in part by climate change and also just air quality issues. A lot of Chinese cities have almost unbearably bad air quality and they want to try to improve that and they're making great headways. So at least at first, it seems like these two blocks, along with India and Japan, the other major economies Canada for that matter,

say they're going to stick with it. The problem is one of the one of the goals for trying to keep global temperature chain to less than two degrees celsius the centry compared to pre industrial levels was that it was going to require a lot of action before twenty twenty. That's when most terms of the parasraphema were going to come into effect. And now this is just throwing a whole bunch of uncertain team to that level into that area.

And so it seems very likely that the pre twenty twenty ambition, which is the way it's referred to in the process, is not going to be nearly as strong as a lot of people would have hoped. Well, that's interesting you mentioned about the announcement in Brussels tomorrow. Is that is the timing on that coincidental or maybe not so coincidental. I haven't heard any official link about that. I know that the EU China cord was announced before President Trump said that he was going to speak today.

Is that that decision to speak on June first just came out a few days ago when he was at the Group of Seventh summit here in Italy. The Brussels thing was on the agenda before that. But people knew that the US announcement was going to come out around the G seven, So the fact that they ended up being around the same spot in the calendar is probably intentional. The fact that one follows the other by day is

probably a coincidence. Well, and then finally, I wanted to ask you kind of to take a step back and think about what impact this will have on the overall climate in general. You know, I think in his announcement, President Trump said that this actually really won't have an impact that the US was trying from the Paris Accords, will will not affect, you know, the progression of climate

change in any way. What do you think about that? Well, from a scientific basis, if the only thing to change between two scenarios is one is everybody was doing it, and then the other one is everybody with the United States was doing it, the truth is the difference is probably fairly small. I don't think it's as small as what the President said, which was two tens of one degree by the end of the tree. I think that he was doing some liberal rounding off to come up

with that figure. But his larger point is probably not that inaccurate. That the difference of the world including the US, and the world excluding the US, probably not a great difference. Is what is problematic is that it can have a ripple effect. And so, like I said, other countries will

do less before twenty twenty because there's uncertainty. You know, people in corporation say the thing that they want most is to be able to predict what they're going to be required to do in two, five, ten, twenty years and so on. This makes a lot of that hard to do. And then there is a possibility that some companies in some countries may decide to try to backslide.

Maybe not right away, but let's say that they see that their US competitors are not needing to follow these rules and as a result, they're making products cheaper or faster, they're shipping them easier. Thing like that. They might start to pressure their governments and doing something similar. And so if it happened in a vacuum, the changes are not that great. But as it's not happening in a vacuum, and so we don't know what the ripple sust you're

going to be. It's impossible to forecast, but there's no doubt that a few years down the line, we'll look back and we'll see this as a turning point. That's international climate reporter Eric Lyman talking about the Paris Climate Agreement. For more of our reporting on climate change, visit our website at BNA dot com. This episode of Parts for a Billion was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. The music for Parts per Billion

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