Experts Agree: Trump Should Permanently Defeat the Paris Climate Treaty. Here's How.

Energy policy analysts are calling on President Trump to submit the United Nation’s Paris Climate Agreement to the U.S. Senate. Properly considering the Paris “agreement” as a treaty requiring a two-thirds vote for ratification would restore the Senate’s role in our constitutional republic. The alternative involves surrendering our sovereignty and moving in step with the U.N.’s cumbersome provisions for withdrawing.

Otherwise, analysts point out a future administration could simply reinsert the U.S. into the international climate agreement just as President Biden did in February 2021. A straight up-and-down vote in the Senate would likely result in permanently terminating U.S. participation in a regulatory regime that Trump, and other critics, view as a raw deal for Americans.

The Paris Climate Agreement emerged from a 2015 U.N. climate meeting. Under the agreement, participating countries pledge to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions through “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs for the ostensible purpose of reducing “global warming.” Trump has long maintained that the international climate agreement “handicaps the United States economy” without producing any benefits for the climate or the environment. 

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit that favors free market energy policies, told Restoration News he is confident Trump will move once again to withdraw from the climate agreement. But he also warns that the methodology is critical. 

“The best option for President-Elect Trump.,” Pyle said in an interview, “is to simply submit the Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate because it really is a treaty and it should be treated as a treaty. President Obama and his team played fast and loose with the language so they could bypass the Senate when they joined the agreement. Trump now has the opportunity to restore our time-honored tradition of checks and balances by reactivating the Senate’s role in treaty ratification, which is what should have happened right from the beginning.”

The U.N. and “Global Warming”

Some history is in order. 

It was President George H.W. Bush who brought the U.S. into the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) during the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. The framework rests on the assumption that human CO2 emissions are responsible for dangerous levels of global warming. But a growing body of scientists and researchers from across the globe associated with the CO2 Coalition take issue with alarmist theories underpinning the U.N. convention. The CO2 Coalition, a Virginia-based nonprofit, has published reports highlighting the benefits of CO2 while also pointing to natural influences as the primary factors driving climate change.

Beginning in 1995, the countries that ratified the FCCC began convening as a Conference of the Parties or COP with the most recent meeting, COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan this past November. The Paris Agreement emerged from COP21, making it arguably the most consequential of the all the U.N. climate conferences. 

In many respects, the Paris Agreement is a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, an international “cap and trade” treaty that was adopted in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997. But that previous July, the U.S. Senate, in a 95-0 vote, passed a resolution against adopting the protocol or any other similar agreement. In 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the protocol. 

“Trump also has the option of removing the U.S. from U.N. framework, which is the parent treaty of Kyoto and also Paris,” Pyle said. “This would mean the U.S. would no longer be participating as a member of this particular council. That would be a more durable and lasting change than what President Trump did previously.”

The Paris Agreement stipulates that a country cannot give notice of withdrawal prior to three of years of when the agreement takes hold in a particular country. For the U.S., this was Nov. 4, 2016. Trump therefore gave notice on Nov. 4, 2019. But by following U.N. guidelines, the withdrawal process took 12 months. 

Elections Have Consequences

As it turns out, this made the official withdrawal date Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which Trump lost to Biden. 

“In the previous administration there were forces seeking to convince President Trump to remain in the Paris Treaty, and forces persuading him to withdraw,” Pyle recalls. “He had the right instincts, but he was persuaded to take the path of least resistance by following the U.N. provisions for withdrawing. The best path forward in his new administration would be for him to submit the treaty for a vote in the U.S. Senate.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian, free market think tank based in Washington, released a detailed analysis of the legal and economic pitfalls associated with the Paris Agreement during the first Trump administration. The analysis delves into detail as to why the climate agreement is in fact a treaty based on its costs and obligations. 

“By accurately describing the Paris Agreement as a treaty and sending to the U.S. Senate, Trump’s actions would have the added benefit of reasserting Congress’s authority to legislate while also reasserting the Senate’s role to advise and consent,” Pyle said. “The founders felt it was important for the Senate to have input on treaties. The Senate is also accountable to the voters in a way U.N. bureaucrats are not. Allowing a president to bypass the Senate sets a terrible precedent that jeopardizes self-government.”

Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington-based free market think tank, is also keen on the idea of having Trump submit the U.N. climate agreement as a treaty to the Senate. He advises the incoming Trump administration to move with a certain sense of urgency in light of what has transpired under President Biden. 

“Getting the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement is more compelling today than ever before,” Cohen said in an email to Restoration News. “We are well into the green-energy-transition world as laid out in Paris nine years ago—and are far worse for it. Soaring energy prices, environmental degradation caused by the spread of wind turbines and solar-panel arrays, and the grotesque misallocation of public and private funds chasing the dead-end goal of net-zero emissions—are just some of the hallmarks of today’s green utopia.”

Cohen suggests that other nations might be inclined to follow Trump’s lead if he moves decisively. 

“By submitting the Paris Climate Agreement to the Senate, where it faces certain death,” Cohen said, “President Trump can rid the American people of this flawed enterprise, once and for all. By terminating our membership in the UNFCCC, Trump can show the rest of the world what real leadership means.”   

The Policy Implications of the Paris Treaty 

As a substantive matter, the U.N. climate agreement is fundamentally flawed, Pyle argues, because it “puts America last” both in terms of economic and national security.

“Paris is really about a massive redistribution of wealth, sending U.S. tax dollars to what the U.N. deems to be developing countries,” Pyle said. “There is also an effort to replace hydrocarbon based economic activity with greater reliance on products made from rare earth minerals, which are mostly controlled by China. Under this scenario, we go from the United States being in charge of its own energy destiny to being dependent on a hostile actor for its energy.”

The other problem with U.N. climate agreements, Pyle said, is they fail to account for U.S. ingenuity. Thanks to market forces that spurred the U.S. into switching from coal to natural gas, Pyle points out emissions have already been reduced in the U.S. without bending to the regulatory ambitions of the U.N.

“We haven’t had a single vote on net zero policies,” Pyle lamented. “But we should have an open debate and that’s another reason to have the Senate execute its constitutional duties. Since we’ve already reduced emissions through market forces, why do we need to be in Paris as a matter of policy? I’d like for the Senators to ask that question.”

It's not yet clear what path Trump will take, but by taking inspiration from constitutionalists and free market policy advocates, the president-elect could enshrine more permanent changes.

Policy analysts see a huge opportunity for Trump to restore American sovereignty if he willing to seize on the most audacious approach toward separating the U.S. from U.N. obligations. By calling the climate treaty what it is and bringing the Senate back into the ratification process, they argue, Trump can greatly advance his American First agenda.