In ditching Paris deal, Trump does right by America

“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.”

via the New York Post:

June 1, 2017

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.

The Constitution is clear: No treaty is binding on the US government unless ratified by the Senate. That tanked the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 anti-warming treaty that the Senate rejected 95-0. And it would’ve killed the Paris deal that President Obama signed in 2016 — except that his negotiators shaped an “agreement” that wouldn’t go to the Senate.

[…]

Under Paris, as Trump noted, the United States would’ve had to close all its coal plants, even as China builds hundreds more — and coal still generates a third of US electricity.

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.

[…]

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.

Read the full editorial at the New York Post