THE NEW YORK POST: “In Ditching Paris Deal, Trump Does Right By America And The World” In quitting the Paris Accord, President Trump on Thursday did nothing to shift the course of US environmental policy — not even on carbon emissions. But he did put the world on notice that no president can unilaterally commit this nation to such far-reaching agreements. … Yet America will continue to cut its carbon emissions: They’re already down by a fifth since 2000, thanks to fracking and the gradual replacement of coal plants with natural-gas ones. That’s better than Europe did as it implemented Kyoto by making electricity cost twice as much as it does here. Nor did Paris make sense. As Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg notes, it entails costs of over $1 trillion a year to shave 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit off global temperatures by 2100 — a tenth the reduction it said is necessary. … America has far cleaner air and water than it did 50 years ago, and more parkland. It should continue those trends, and keep reducing its carbon emissions — democratically. What the nation won’t do, thanks to the president, is devastate its own economy against the public’s wishes in order to satisfy the global elite. Count this as a major Trump promise kept.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: “Trump Bids Paris Adieu” President Trump announced the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on Thursday, to the horror of green elites world-wide. If the decision shows he is more mindful of American economic interests than they are, the other virtue of pulling out is to expose the fraudulence of this Potemkin village. … But amid the outrage, the aggrieved still haven’t gotten around to resolving the central Paris contradiction, which is that it promises to be Earth-saving but fails on its own terms. It is a pledge of phony progress. The 195 signatory nations volunteered their own carbon emission-reduction pledges, known as ‘intended nationally determined contributions,’ or INDCs. China and the other developing nations account for 63% of annual global CO 2 emissions, and their share is rising. They submitted INDCs that pledged to peak the carbon status quo ‘around’ 2030, and maybe later, or never, since Paris included no enforcement mechanisms to prevent cheating. Meanwhile, the developed OECD nations—responsible for 55% of world CO 2 as recently as 2000—made unrealistic assurances that even they knew they could not achieve. As central-planning prone as the Obama Administration was, it never identified a tax-and-regulation program that came close to meeting its own emissions pledge of 26% to 28% reductions from 2005 levels by 2025.
NATIONAL REVIEW: “We’ll Never Have Paris” President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The United States never should have been in it in the first place, and it’s not even entirely clear that it ever was. In choosing American interests over Davos pieties — in the face of resistance from some within his own administration — the president here has made good on his promise to put America first. The Paris Agreement is a treaty in all but name: The European signatories put it through their usual treaty-ratification protocols, but the United States did not. President Obama went to great lengths to pretend that the treaty was something other than a treaty because he did not wish to submit it for ratification by the Senate, which was almost sure to reject it — as, indeed, the Senate would likely reject it today. In a government of laws, process matters. Substance matters, too, and here the Paris Agreement is deficient.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “By Leaving Paris Climate-Change Deal, Trump Will Do U.S. Economy A ‘Yuuuge’ Favor” Climate Change: President Trump is letting it be known that he intends to take the U.S. out of the Paris Accords on climate change. While it will no doubt cause a political flap, it’s a smart move that ends the cynical charade of limiting climate change by shrinking our economy. … This is another reason why Donald Trump’s election has been so fortunate; had all this taken place under President Hillary Clinton, the U.S. would today be saddled with economy-killing regulations that would have destroyed our prosperity and cost us hundreds of billions of dollars a year for nothing in return.
WASHINGTON TIMES: “The Promise To Keep” President Trump said during the campaign last year that the rest of the world is laughing behind America’s back, and never would that be more evident than if the United States becomes a party to the ruinous Paris accord. This is a shakedown of the American taxpayer for a treaty that will do nothing to save or clean up the planet. This might be worth the cost, as enormous as it would be, if there were a genuine environmental benefit. Alas, there is none. China and India — by far the two largest polluters — have announced they will build hundreds of new coal-fired plants to power economic expansion. They’re not about to let climate change concerns stall their economic engines. China first, India first, and no apology. But America is expected to sign a treaty that would decree that for every coal plant closed in Ohio or shuttered in West Virginia, China and India would build 10 new plants.
