If The USA Exits The Paris Agreement, This Is What Will Happen
An official decision is expected any day now, but it appears his advisors that severely dislike the pact – including Breitbart alum Steve Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt – are winning the argument.
Although plenty of people have heard of the Paris agreement, few know exactly what it does, and why it would be, in the view of IFLScience, a terrible mistake for the US to withdraw from it. Here is your primer, dear readers.
What The Paris Agreement Does
The Paris agreement was signed by almost every single country in the world back in December 2015, with China and the US – the world’s first and second-most prolific greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters by far, respectively – being the key brokers of the deal.
It was rightly seen at the time as a groundbreaking call to arms: a legitimate, workable attempt to stop the world warming any more than 2°C (3.6°F), and preferably no more than 1.5°C (2.7°F), as requested by a swath of developing and vulnerable nations.
Each of the nations that have signed the Paris Agreement has had to submit their plans to draw down their GHGs over the next few decades. Importantly, as noted in the pact, each nation’s framework for cutting GHGs has to get stronger and more ambitious over time. They are legally mandated to keep informing the UN as to how they are progressing in this manner, but there isn’t a punitive measure in place for those that fall behind.
Poorer nations already plagued by climate nightmares will have a harder time cutting their GHG levels, which is why wealthier nations have agreed to contribute billions in aid payments to ease their transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
For its part, the Obama administration pledged $3 billion in such aid. It donated $1 billion before Obama left office, and the $2 billion is not expected to be handed over by his successor.
That, in a nutshell, is what Paris is about – so what would happen if America withdrew from it, and the agreement ultimately fails?
The US Economy Will Take A Massive Hit
Powerful natural disasters, as well as the effect that rising temperatures will have on an increasingly stressed workforce, means that the US will be robbed of $2 trillion by 2030. If it remains in the pact, one analysis suggests that the entire world economy will get a $19 trillion paycheck by 2050, with America getting a significant share – and not just because there’ll be less damage from hurricanes and flooding.
Markets have turned against coal. It may be cheap these days, but renewables and natural gas – a low-carbon fossil fuel – are in many US states even cheaper, and far less likely to cause litigation-heavy disasters and pollution outbreaks.
Consequently, compared to coal and gas, the renewable energy sector is adding five times as many jobs. In fact, the job market in clean energy is expanding so rapidly that this is where the bulk of the $19 trillion would come from.
Trump often boasts on Twitter about jobs he’s supposedly creating by signing his stream of nonsensical executive orders, even though plenty of these are the result of a record job growth streak that’s hanging over from the previous administration. If he really wants to create jobs, he should invest in solar panels and wind turbines.
America Would Be Pummeled By Natural Disasters
Hurricanes are terrifying forces of nature, but it’s not the wind that does the most damage – it’s the storm surge. This flooding is responsible for the most infrastructural damage and death, and it’ll only be exacerbated by rising sea levels.
Hurricanes, in general, are becoming stronger, with increasingly warm waters providing them with more “fuel”. They’re also getting stranger, and sometimes appearing in unprecedented pairs before slamming into US coastlines.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the expected annual hurricane damage bill is around $28 billion. By 2075, thanks to unconscientious coastal development and climate change, this will rise to $39 billion.
As Spring arrives earlier every year and summer gets more intense, droughts and wildfires will also linger for longer. In terms of the latter, since 1979, wildfire seasons are now 19 percent longer, and the global frequency of long fire weather seasons has jumped up by 53 percent. The amount of burnable land affected has risen by a staggering 108 percent.
Climate Refugees From Coastal Regions Will Flood Inland
So far, climate change refugees are found moving across the Middle East and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of which will be uninhabitably hot and devoid of local, drinkable water by 2050. Similarly, low-lying islands in the middle of the Pacific and Indian Oceans will soon see them sink beneath the waves, forcing their residents to flee.
During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore made a campaign stop together in Florida. The state is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and hurricanes, so they made a point that the Republican Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, is ironically a climate change denier. Rubio was re-elected as Senator anyway.
This won’t help those living along the coast, particularly in Miami, which will see more than 2 million of its residents lose their houses to the sea by 2100. In total, 13.1 million Americans will be forced to move away from the coast and into cities further inland by then. This will place a huge burden on cities like Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, and Chicago – and an economic headache is likely to follow.
America Will Get Sicker
Climate change also, directly and indirectly, affects people’s health in ways scientists are only just beginning to discover. For every degree the mercury rises, an extra 100,000 people will get diabetes as their warmer bodies will be unable to break down blood sugar as efficiently. Earlier Springs mean that asthma and hay fever sufferers will experience attacks earlier and more severely.
Communicable diseases like malaria and Zika will be able to reach areas further north than they have ever been, and stagnant air means pollution lingers for longer. Expect an increase in respiratory and cardiovascular ailments over the next few decades.
America’s Defensive Capabilities Will Weaken
There’s a surprisingly linear relationship between violence and environmental temperature, which leads to some shocking projections. Between 1981 and 2006, warfare in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by more than 11 percent, and by 2030, the annual incidence of war will have jumped up 54 percent.
In short, climate change is robbing developing nations vulnerable to violence of basic resources, like food and water. This leads to a collapsing economy and warring people, which as a recent report notes fuels extremism, something that America is indeed wary of.
A bipartisan group of defense experts in the US, and even Trump’s own Defense Secretary understands that climate change will make protecting the US’ interests at home and overseas more difficult. Apart from an increase in overseas violence, more powerful natural disasters will threaten American troop deployments and military bases in far-flung nations.
Violent Crime Within The US Will Worsen
Speaking of violence, a warmer America will also cause a noticeable spike in stress among some of its citizens. Based on past trends, an America that refuses to cut its carbon emissions will see an extra 180,000 rape cases, 22,000 murders, and 1.2 million aggravated assault cases by the end of the century.
Those Below The Poverty Line Will Starve
Plenty of us take food for granted, but there are millions of Americans who struggle to buy food every single day. As of 2015, there were 43.1 million of them below the poverty line. As the climate warms, food will be harder to grow, as studies have shown that agriculture cannot keep up with the rate of warming.
As agriculture begins to fail, food will become rarer – or imported more – and will become more expensive. Plenty of these people in poverty will begin to starve without any form of welfare.
America’s Influence In The World Will Shrink
One of the few arguments that Trump may pay attention to, this is the primary concern touted by those in his inner circle that advocate staying within the treaty, including his own daughter.
The Paris agreement is one of the largest diplomatic undertakings in human history, and not even one of the other signatories have said they’ll withdraw from the pact if America does. Most notably, both the European Union and China have stepped up to the plate.
China is a nascent superpower that is often in active competition with the US. Although it has likely come to realize that it needs to cut down on its emissions to protect its own civilians from the scourge of pollution and climate change, it sees an opportunity here to lead from the front.
If America does withdraw from Paris, China will at this rate become the de facto leading voice on climate change. This will boost its global image among otherwise wary nations, and America’s influence will wane significantly as a result.
The Wider World Would Suffer Too…
If the world’s second-most prolific GHG producer fails to stick to Paris, the world will be a far more dangerous place – that much is very clear indeed.
Developing nations, those who rely on America’s payments to the UN, will fall by the wayside and probably stick to cheaper coal. There’s a chance that the Paris agreement will fail without America’s contributions, and the world will breach the 2°C limit by 2100 – or worse.
If The USA Exits The Paris Agreement, This Is What Will Happen
Although, at this point it seems pretty unlikely we'll stay in the agreement, and a lot of this will probably happen anyway.
