President Donald Trump's announcement to withdraw the United States unilaterally from the Paris Accords has arguably awakened more fury in his critics than any other position he's staked out. His critics seem to believe that his right-wing agenda is to poison the entire planet. It is, therefore, important to disentangle the plusses and minuses of the Trump position. Indeed, for all its defects, Trump's position is more coherent than that of his fiercest critics.
As I indicated in my earlier column on the subject, there are at least two principled ways to defend Trump's decision to exit Paris. First is the weak scientific case that links global warming and other planetary maladies to increases in carbon dioxide levels. There are simply too many other forces that can account for shifts in temperature and the various environmental calamities that befall the world. Second, the economic impulses underlying the Paris Accords entail a massive financial commitment, including huge government subsidies for wind and solar energy, which have yet to prove themselves viable. The President should have stated these two points, and then challenged his opponents to explain how the recent greening of the planet, for example, could possibly presage the grim future of rising seas and expanded deserts routinely foretold by climate activists.
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