Trump Isn’t a Climate Denier. He’s Worse.
The United States began the formal process of leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change yesterday, withdrawing on the first day it was legally possible. Barring something unforeseen, the country will depart the accord on November 4, 2020—a day after the next presidential election.
If it feels like the Paris withdrawal has been coming for years, that’s not wrong. It was already clear on the day he was elected that President Donald Trump would leave the Paris Agreement. After some vacillating early in his term, Trump made a sunny, pomp-dense Rose Garden speech in June 2017 and promised to depart the treaty. But under the agreement’s terms, he could not formally notify the United Nations of his intent to leave until this week, and American diplomats attended climate negotiations in the interim.
Nearly two and a half years later, it’s worth briefly remembering that 2017 speech, which . Scott Pruitt, the only other Cabinet official who spoke at the event, a little more than a year later. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (whom Trump later ) and Energy Secretary Rick Perry (who before the end of the year) also attended. The effort to leave Paris has by now three chiefs of staff, four national security advisers, and 10 Cabinet secretaries. Trump himself really wants to leave the treaty.
