Donald Trump may have done the world a big favour last Thursday afternoon when he announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement. In a single blurt, he largely muted three years of expected US obstruction at the international climate negotiating table, while salvaging the momentum toward ever-more-ambitious greenhouse gas reductions at the heart of the Paris process.<\/p>\n
Trump also opened up a golden opportunity for Canada to lead on climate change, and reap the resulting diplomatic and economic benefits.<\/p>\n
In the tortured weeks leading up to the White House decision, as world leaders<\/a> and more than 1,100 US businesses<\/a> urged the administration to stick with the landmark global climate deal, there were only a few, quiet cracks in an otherwise united front. Once in a while, on private e-mail lists and in occasional articles or blog posts, questions would come to the surface:<\/p>\n Is this a moment when the climate community should be careful what it wishes for?<\/em><\/p>\n Or, more directly:<\/p>\n If the Trump administration is intent on poisoning the Paris agreement from within, do we really want them at the table?<\/em><\/p>\n Once Trump made up his mind, the floodgates opened. The global community was only too happy to let an obstinate, factually challenged<\/a> adversary go his own way.<\/p>\n Making the planet great again<\/strong><\/p>\n The reaction<\/a> was as swift and fierce as Trump\u2019s initial statement<\/a> was brutal.<\/p>\n In what some news reports interpreted as a conciliatory gesture, Trump said he would re-enter the Paris agreement if it were recast in the United States\u2019 favour. \u201cWe will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that\u2019s fair,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if we can, that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n The world community had other ideas.<\/p>\n “If one country decides to leave a void, I can guarantee that someone else will occupy it,” said<\/a> United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s announcement has galvanized us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new, broad, committed leadership,\u201d tweeted<\/a> EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Ca\u00f1ete.<\/p>\n In a bilingual statement that may have produced the most widely quoted phrase of all, newly minted French president Emmanuel Macron concluded<\/a>, \u201cLet\u2019s make our planet great again.\u201d<\/p>\n Even Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov affirmed that \u201cPresident Putin signed this convention in Paris,\u201d and \u201cRussia attaches great significance to it.\u201d<\/p>\n US state and city governments, meanwhile, unveiled a new climate alliance that will work around the White House to meet their country\u2019s Paris target and report progress to the UN climate secretariat.<\/p>\n And as for the methods and modalities of a complex, carefully crafted international accord, the UN secretariat weighed in<\/a> with its own brake on Trump\u2019s flight of fancy.<\/p>\n While the secretariat \u201cstands ready to engage in dialogue with the United States government regarding the implications of this announcement,\u201d it said, \u201cthe Paris Agreement remains a historic treaty signed by 195 Parties and ratified by 146 countries plus the European Union. Therefore, it cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party.\u201d<\/p>\n What if Trump had stayed?<\/strong><\/p>\n In the 24 hours after the announcement, the realization dawned that nations had dodged a bullet. The US could have done real damage to climate change action by keeping a seat at the table. Instead, while the withdrawal won\u2019t take effect until November 4, 2020, Trump\u2019s statement means his negotiators will be taken far less seriously as the rest of the world develops the rulebook to implement Paris.<\/p>\n That\u2019s crucial, because a defining characteristic of the Paris agreement is that it\u2019ll only succeed if it gets better, stronger, and more ambitious over time. Delegates arrived at the Paris conference knowing they weren\u2019t adopting an agreement that would cap average global warming at 2.0\u00b0C \u2014 much less the real required target of 1.5\u00b0C \u2014 in a single shot.<\/p>\n Instead, the agreement incorporates an ambition mechanism<\/a>, essentially a timeline for countries to increase their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction commitments. The most immediate moment on the horizon is an initial dialogue in 2018 leading up to a \u201cglobal stocktake\u201d in 2023, aimed at assessing progress toward the Paris targets and beyond.<\/p>\n Those milestones are intended as opportunities for countries to advance collectively toward a postcarbon economy. But what if a large, influential player took those opportunities to obstruct, distract, and belittle?<\/p>\n There have been moments when the US played exactly that role \u2014 when George W. Bush pulled his country out of the Kyoto Protocol, or when a change in congressional leadership turned the US from a tough but fair participant into an implacable adversary in mid-1990s negotiations on an Arctic environmental protection strategy.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a pretty picture, and it\u2019s not the outcome our grandchildren need or deserve from the Paris process.<\/p>\n A more specific risk stemmed from some of the diplomatic acrobatics climate negotiators went through in hopes of keeping Trump engaged. After White House counsel Don McGahn opined that the US couldn\u2019t scale back its carbon reduction commitments if it stayed in the agreement, key architects of the deal insisted<\/a> it had been purposely crafted with that flexibility in mind.<\/p>\n It was a tragically ironic moment, after those same negotiators had worked to build an agreement that would push participants to continually amp up their decarbonization commitments over time. And it would have \u201cset a damaging precedent,\u201d noted Christian Holz, senior research associate at the Climate Equity Reference Project, and one of Canada\u2019s most knowledgeable observers of international climate negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would severely undermine the whole point of the Paris agreement that the direction of travel is only forward, that every few years countries have to come back with pledges that are more ambitious than the previous,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n The opportunity for Canada<\/strong><\/p>\n Every aspect of Trump\u2019s decision creates opportunity for Canada, from a diplomatic void<\/a> that will rapidly be filled, to the job and business benefits of a $3-trillion clean energy revolution<\/a>. In correspondence last week, Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network-Canada, boiled it down to a stark choice: \u201cWill we step into the vacuum created by U.S. retreat from climate leadership? Or will we bow to detractors who, emboldened by Trump\u2019s rhetoric, claim climate action puts Canada at a disadvantage?\u201d<\/p>\n Federal climate policy suggests both outcomes are plausible. Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wowed Paris delegates<\/a> with his promise that \u201cCanada is back, and here to help,\u201d Ottawa has pushed through a pan-Canadian climate framework, but focused it on achieving the country\u2019s inadequate, Harper-era GHG target, then approved new fossil megaprojects destined to blow the country\u2019s carbon budget. The country adopted tough new regulations on climate-busting methane emissions, then allowed industry to arm-twist it into a three-year delay<\/a> in implementation.<\/p>\n But it might just be that Trump\u2019s announcement, to steal a well-worn phrase, changes everything. \u201cNow is the moment for Canada to take it to the next level, seize the benefits of climate action, and emerge on the international stage as a bold climate leader,\u201d Abreu said. \u201cThe world is practically pleading with us to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n And with a number of key diplomatic levers coming up in the next 18 months, including Canada\u2019s turn in the G-7 presidency in 2018, \u201cPrime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet have an opportunity to distance themselves from Trump\u2019s shadow.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Protesters gather outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, June 1, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the Unites States from the Paris climate change accord. (AP Photo\/Susan Walsh)<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump may have done the world a big favour last Thursday afternoon when he announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement. In a single blurt, he largely muted three years of expected US obstruction at the international climate negotiating table, while salvaging the momentum toward ever-more-ambitious greenhouse gas reductions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":253655,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T01:38:31Z","apple_news_api_id":"d6c64757-68cd-4c48-90c0-62884a96a43d","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T01:38:32Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A1sZHV2jNTEiQwGKISpakPQ","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9361,9360,9372],"tags":[8638,8476],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4217,4261],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7189],"class_list":["post-265198","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environnement","category-international","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-changements-climatiques","tag-us-politics-fr","irpp-category-affaires-internationales","irpp-category-environnement","irpp-tag-etats-unis"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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