Roger A. Pielke, Jr. (photo credit: University of Colorado)
A University of Colorado Boulder professor said President Donald Trump’s reported decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement offers an opportunity for the crafting of bipartisan climate policy.
“Paris is but a means to an end, and arguably, not much of one anyway. Trump gives climate advocates an opportunity,” Roger A. Pielke, Jr. tweeted. “The opportunity is to reimagine an approach to US climate policy that is acceptable, even fought for, by Republicans.” Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, has authored several books on climate change, and his work was previously targeted by a liberal group and a Democratic congressman.
“Fact: climate policy cannot succeed if a prerequisite is Dem control of US government for the next 75 years,” Pielke continued. “US climate policy is going to be wildly unstable until policy wonks come up with good policy options that both parties support,” he tweeted.
The climate agreement, reached in Paris at the end of 2015, commits nearly 200 countries to working to limit increases in global temperatures. Last week, a group of 22 Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (Wyo.), sent a letter to the president urging a “clean break” from the agreement. Withdrawing from the agreement “is the biggest thing Trump could do to unravel Obama’s climate legacy,” Axios reports today.
“It would be easy to reflexively react to Trump’s withdrawal with anger at Trump & renewed partisan spirits,” Pielke tweeted. “That would be a mistake.”
The official decision on the agreement will be announced later this week. “I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days,” Trump tweeted this morning.
