3 Ways Trump Could Abandon the Paris Climate Pact 
 
 The possibility that a climate science denier could soon become America’s president is serving as an urgent motivator for diplomats gathering in New York this week for United Nations meetings. 
 
 Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has called climate change a “hoax” and said that as president he would “cancel” the UN’s new climate pact, the Paris agreement, which was finalized last December. 
 
 If enough countries join the U.S., China and Brazil in formally committing to join the pact this year, it’s been reported that the pact would become “Trump-proof.” Legal experts, however, say a Trump administration would have several options for abandoning the agreement during its first term, which would severely jeopardize its potential to succeed. 
 
 Presidential candidate Donald Trump. 
 
 Credit: Matt A.J./flickr 
 
 Global unity to tackle climate change was found between nearly 200 countries in December during the crucial treaty negotiations in Paris, influenced by the leaders of the U.S. and China, which are the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters. 
 
 Under the Paris agreement, countries volunteer to take steps to reduce their impacts on the climate beginning in 2020. The U.S. has pledged to reduce its pollution levels in 2025 to 26 percent below its 2005 levels, largely by switching away from burning coal for electricity. 
 
 Future talks are designed to see national pledges improved, with the goal of keeping warming to well below 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial times. The earth’s surface has already warmed a little more than half that amount since then, and concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse pollution are rising at a steady rate. Every month since the deal was struck has broken a global temperature record. Rising temperatures are worsening floods, fires, heat waves and other disasters. 
 
 The vulnerability of the climate pact shows efforts to curb warming’s impacts remain beholden to the whims of elections and personalities. More than a year of campaigning has shown there are few personalities in politics larger and less predictable than Trump’s. As president, Trump couldn’t “cancel” the Paris agreement, but he would have at least three options for walking America away from it. 
 
 If elected president, legal precedent and a careful reading of Article 28 in the Paris agreement indicate he would have the power to formally withdraw the U.S. from it as soon as a year after it takes effect by abandoning a 1992 treaty — without any need for lawmaker approval. 
 
 A second option, which would be slower but somewhat less confrontational, could see Trump wait until the end of his first term before taking advantage of a provision in the agreement that would let him yank America from the pact. 
 
 The third option may be the easiest of all. Even without withdrawing formally, a Trump administration could undermine the agreement by abandoning rules, incentives and programs designed to reduce pollution, preventing the U.S. from living up to its new commitments to the climate. Trump has said he would eliminate the EPA, which oversees many of those rules and programs. 
 
 While the Paris pact fails to require the types of aggressive actions needed to safely slow global warming, it is nonetheless considered a landmark political achievement. 
 
 If the “U.S. or any large country walks away from the agreement,” said Harjeet Singh, an ActionAid official based in India, where he works on international climate issues, it would represent an “epic failure” to not build on what had been a “huge political feat.” 
 
 If the Paris agreement takes effect before the presidential inauguration in January, here’s a look at the three most likely options a Trump administration may pursue for stepping away from it: 
 
 The Passive Option 
 
 If the U.S. withdrew from the Paris agreement, the diplomatic blowback could dwarf the global imbroglio that followed President George W. Bush’s 2001 announcement that he wouldn’t implement the Kyoto protocol, which was ultimately a failure. 
 
 “The pushback would be greater,” said Dale Jamieson, a New York University environmental studies and philosophy professor who has tracked global climate diplomacy for years. “Since Paris doesn't commit people to much of anything anyway, it would be stupid beyond belief for him to withdraw — and there wouldn't be much reason for people to try to save it.” 
 
 Instead of withdrawing formally, Trump as president could simply disassemble environmental regulations and undermine national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Harvard professor Robert Stavins said that and other measures could “all but ensure” that America would fail to live up to its commitments under the Paris agreement. 
 
 The Slow Option 
 
 There’s a more deliberate path that Trump could take to extract America from the pact, but it would require waiting until the end of what would be his first term. 
 
 The agreement says countries must wait at least three years after formally joining the agreement before they can file paperwork needed to withdraw from it, followed by an additional one-year wait. 
 
 Obama filed paperwork with the UN this month indicating the U.S. is ready to join the Paris agreement. Once at least 55 countries, responsible for at least 55 percent of greenhouse gas pollution, have filed similar paperwork the Paris agreement will take effect and those 55 or more countries will join. 
 
 It currently seems likely that the agreement will take effect before the January inauguration of America’s 45th president. By Monday morning 28 countries had submitted their paperwork, and more filings are expected this week as the UN holds annual meetings in New York. 
 
 A view of Manhattan over the top of the Headquarters of the United Nations. 
 
 Credit: Anthony Quintano/flickr 
 
 The Aggressive Option 
 
 By invoking a little-noticed provision of the Paris agreement, legal experts point out the four-year waiting period could be cut to one year by withdrawing the U.S. from a 1992 climate treaty. 
 
 When Obama formally signed onto the Paris agreement this month, he didn’t need Senate approval to do so. That’s because it’s consistent with existing laws and agreements — most notably the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty. 
 
 The Paris agreement states that any country that withdraws from the 1992 treaty “shall be considered as also having withdrawn” from the agreement. 
 
 “The U.S. could withdraw from the UNFCCC with one year’s notice, which would also effectuate a withdrawal from the [Paris agreement],” Arizona State University law professor Dan Bodansky said. 
 
 Although the 1992 treaty was ratified by the Senate, history suggests a president would not need the Senate’s blessing before withdrawing from it. 
 
 “The president has plenary authority to manage foreign affairs,” said Michael Wara, an environmental law expert at Stanford. “Since the Constitution is silent as to treaty withdrawal, a president can do that without consulting with Congress.” 
 
 Wara pointed out that in 1992, President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from an anti-ballistic missile treaty that the Senate had ratified in 1972 without seeking the Senate’s approval. After President Carter withdrew from a defense treaty with Taiwan, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge filed by members of Congress. 
 
 “The UNFCCC is a forum for negotiating, and withdrawal from that would essentially be saying, ‘We’re not even going to talk about this any more,” Wara said. 
 
 If the U.S. withdrew from or undermined the Paris agreement, reprisals from other countries may be sharp — but they would probably be indirect. 
 
 “What are the other countries going to do to retaliate? Emit more greenhouse gas emissions? Of course not,” Wara said. “But it would mean that when we need their help to achieve some other diplomatic objective, they would trust our promises much less.” ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of top scientists warned on Tuesday against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vow to pull the United States out of the Paris climate-warming accord if elected in November. 
 
 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, U.S. September 19, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst 
 
 The 375 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel Prize winners, said in an open letter that a U.S. abandonment of the agreement would make it far harder to develop global strategies to lessen the impact of global warming. 
 
 “Thus it is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord,” the letter said. 
 
 “A ‘Parexit’ would send a clear signal to the rest of the world: ‘The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change. You are on your own.’” 
 
 Among the signers are biologist E.O. Wilson, physicists Stephen Hawking and Claude Canizares, astrophysicist Simon D.M. White, and Nobel winners Thomas Steitz, Michael Levitt and William Daniel Phillips. 
 
 The National Academy of Sciences is a private society of scholars who advise the United States on science and technological matters. The signers of the letter said they did so as individuals and not on behalf of the Academy or their institutions. 
 
 In Paris last December, almost 200 countries agreed to slash greenhouse gases and keep global temperature rises to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. The United States and China, the two largest producers of carbon emissions, ratified the accord this month. 
 
 Trump will speak at a natural gas industry conference in Pennsylvania on Thursday. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 Trump has dismissed manmade climate change as a hoax invented by the Chinese and says he will abandon the Paris agreement if elected. 
 
 He has vowed to reverse much of the work the administration of President Barack Obama has done to address climate change, including rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
 The Republican Party platform also questions the legality of Obama’s executive order ratifying the Paris deal. 
 
 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is a strong supporter of the Paris accord. ||||| Donald Trump is looking for a fast way to escape a global agreement to limit climate change, a source on his transition team has said. 
 
 The Paris Agreement won enough international backing to enter into force on 4 November, and since Mr Trump's remarkable victory more world leaders have backed the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
 But Mr Trump, who once called climate change a “hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese “in order to make US manufacturing non competitive,” has pledged to quit the agreement. 
 
 Countries ranging from China to small island states reaffirmed support for the 2015 accord, at 200-nation climate talks running until 18 November in Marrakesh, Morocco. 
 
 But a source who is part of the team helping Mr Trump smoothly assume presidency, told Reuters he is considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord. 
 
 “It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election” on Tuesday, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 
 
 Mr Trump could send a letter withdrawing from a 1992 Convention that is the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement, voiding US involvement in both in a year's time, or issue a presidential order simply deleting the US signature from the Paris accord, the source said. 
 
 Many nations have expressed hopes the United States will stay. Host Morocco said the agreement that seeks to phase out greenhouse gases in the second half of the century was strong enough to survive a pullout. 
 
 “If one party decides to withdraw that it doesn't call the agreement into question,” Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar told a news conference. 
 
 The agreement was reached by almost 200 nations in December and, as of Saturday, has been formally ratified by 109 representing 76 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States with 18 per cent. 
 
 The accord seeks to limit rising temperatures that have been linked to increasing economic damage from desertification, extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels. 
 
 Current US secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday that he would continue his efforts to implement the Paris agreement until Barack Obama leaves office on 20 January. 
 
 “The evidence is mounting in ways that people in public life should not dare to avoid accepting as a mandate for action,” Mr Kerry said. 
 
 “Now the world’s scientific community has concluded that climate change is happening beyond any doubt. And the evidence is there for everybody to see." 
 
 UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa declined to comment on Mr Trump source's remarks to Reuters. 
 
 “The Paris Agreement carries an enormous amount of weight and credibility,” she told a news conference. She said the United Nations hoped for a strong and constructive relationship with Mr Trump. 
 
 The Trump source blamed U.S. President Barack Obama for joining up by an executive order, without getting approval from the Senate. “There wouldn't be this diplomatic fallout on the broader international agenda if Obama hadn't rushed the adoption,” he said. 
 
 Additional reporting by Reuters ||||| How were climate scientists, policymaker and diplomats planning to deal with a Donald Trump presidency? The truth is, they weren’t. People who have dedicated their lives to working to save the planet always preferred to focus optimistically on how they could push a President Hillary Clinton further to the left on climate policy. 
 
 But Trump’s move to the White House in just a couple of months will almost certainly bring an end to an era of promising action to address climate change in the U.S. and could unravel ambitious international efforts to do the same. Environmentalists who just days ago hoped to build on the climate successes of President Barack Obama will now be forced to fight tooth and nail to protect existing checks on greenhouse emissions. 
 
 “We start by acknowledging reality. When he assumes office, Trump will be the only head of state to deny that climate change is real,” says Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “We’re going to need to do everything we can to play defense against the worst impulses of the next administration.” 
 
 Trump never rooted his campaign in detailed policy agenda, but his speeches did indicate that several energy and environmental policies could receive his immediate attention. The president-elect promised he would “scrap” much existing environmental regulation and bring back the ailing coal industry. 
 
 Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement—the most significant international agreement on climate change—seems to rank at the top of Trump’s environmental agenda. As a candidate, he repeatedly promise to “cancel” or renegotiate the agreement, saying it put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage economically, especially to large developing nations like China that were less constrained on carbon emissions. Formally withdrawing from the deal requires a lengthy process that would take at least three years because the agreement has already gone into formal effect. And renegotiating the agreement would be almost impossible, given that the accord is the product of decades of international work. 
 
 Read More: Why Trump’s Promise to Save the Coal Industry Does More Damage Than Good 
 
 But Trump still could render the accord meaningless by simply declining to participate. The U.S. has committed through the Paris Agreement to working to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025, but the targets are non-binding and the country would face no penalties for non-compliance. There’s precedent to such a strategy—Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol under a Liberal government, but when Conservatives took power they largely stopped trying to reduce carbon emissions, before withdrawing from the agreement in 2011. 
 
 As the world’s second-biggest carbon emitter after China, U.S. inaction will cause major damage to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and keep warming beneath 2 C (3.6 F). But it would also send a dismaying signal to other countries, which will feel less pressure to follow through on their own pledges absent U.S. participation. 
 
 Authorities around the around—including in China and Brazil, two major developing world carbon emitters—expressed concern at the possibility of a Trump presidency for climate action in advance of the election. U.S. officials have insisted that they expect the country to remain in the agreement despite Trump’s promises. The politics of dropping the agreement would agitate the rest of the world and diminish the country’s standing. “We’re a leading country. We’ll continue to be a leading country,” said Jonathan Pershing, the State Department’s chief climate negotiator before the election. “I think that’s the likely outcome and that’s the message that we’re going to be passing on to the global community.” 
 
 Climate negotiators from around the globe are currently gathered at a U.N. conference in Marrakech—known as COP 22—to discuss implementing the Paris Agreement. Key issues like ensuring transparent reporting of emissions reductions and financing climate efforts in developing countries remain top concerns. Negotiators there watched the results of the presidential election closely. While many there have remained publicly optimistic, the challenges of a Trump presidency have dominated the first days of the talks. 
 
 Read More: What to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests 
 
 Trump has also promised to scrap President Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan, which requires states to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. After a Democratic-controlled Congress failed to pass comprehensive carbon cap-and-trade legislation, Obama relied on federal rule making to enact carbon cuts. But that strategy is vulnerable to repeal by a future administration—as Trump may test. Such a process would be time consuming. In addition to rewriting the rules, a new administration would have to provide new legal and scientific justifications for the move and environmental groups and green-minded states would almost certainly fight back through the courts. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that under the Clean Air Act the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is implementing the Clean Power Plan, must regulate pollutants “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” That ruling specifically applied to carbon emissions from vehicles, but the legal rationale was applied to power plants. 
 
 Alternatively, the Trump administration could push Congress to change the language of the Clean Air Act. Such a move has been tried before—then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had such a revision as part of his Contract With America in the 1990s. But those moves were stymied at least in part because of widespread opposition to weakening laws that protect public health, a sentiment that environmental groups think would prevail again. 
 
 Even with Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, all hope is not lost. Market forces will continue to push a transition away from polluting energy sources, especially coal, no matter what Trump does. (Though oil and coal stocks gained significantly on news of Trump’s election). Growth in renewable power generation from sources like wind and solar topped growth in fossil fuel power worldwide for the first time last year, in large part because those clean sources have become much cheaper, even without government intervention. Businesses have also increasingly committed to addressing climate change and environmental groups say they expect that progress to continue. As they did under the administration of former President George W. Bush, environmental groups will likely push officials to enact climate policy at the state level—something that is already happening in progressive states like California. 
 
 “There’s progress that’s being made on climate change that can’t and won’t be stopped,” says the Sierra Club’s Brune. “We may slow down the rate but that’s progress that can’t be reversed.” ||||| Environmental activists hold a banner during a protest against President-elect Donald Trump at the Climate Conference, known as COP22, in Marrakech, Morocco, on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. The election of a US president who has called global warming a "hoax" alarmed environmentalists and climate scientists and raised questions about whether America, once again, would pull out of an international climate deal. 
 
 Negotiators from around the world, gathered in Morocco, are trying to build on last year's landmark Paris agreement to cut carbon emissions. 
 
 —Donald Trump’s presidential victory throws into doubt America’s policy stance on the major global issue of climate change – and does so at a pivotal moment, just as nations from around the world are trying to solidify and build on a landmark accord to slash carbon emissions nation by nation. 
 
 Mr. Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would “cancel” the Paris climate agreement reached by nearly 200 nations last year. That agreement, the details of which negotiators are now discussing at a UN conference in Marrakech, legally requires that countries monitor and report their progress on emissions of heat-trapping gases. But it doesn’t bind them to actually meet their pledged targets for reducing emissions. 
 
 The US alongside China, the world’s two largest carbon-emitting nations, had played a major role in building momentum for the Paris deal. 
 
 Now, with the Paris agreement newly in force as of last week, it’s not clear if Trump will actually pull America out of the deal. But he can certainly withdraw US leadership on climate action – with repercussions for both US carbon emissions and international momentum on the issue. 
 
 “It is going to be difficult if the federal government pulls out of the game for the states, the cities and the businesses to do it on their own,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at a press conference in Marrakech. “It is an ambitious target especially, when you’re trying to do it without the support of the Congress.” 
 
 And for international action, Trump’s surprise win – which stunned diplomats here – is already shaking up discussions at this year’s climate conference here, where the focus is on putting the Paris deal into action. 
 
 Trump’s election puts US negotiators here in a tough spot: It’s difficult to make any promises to international colleagues given what the shift a Trump White House would mean, compared with the Obama administration. 
 
 Country officials working on the rules guiding transparency for reporting emissions under the Paris agreement were told to keep forging ahead despite the uncertainty Trump's ascension meant. 
 
 "It's like all the hard work of Paris could be wiped away," said Jamie Ovia, an official working on transparency issues for Tuvalu. 
 
 The State Department declined to comment on Trump’s election and its effect on the talks. 
 
 Kalee Kreider, a climate negotiations veteran and former Al Gore adviser, noted it’s not the first United Nations conference thrown into turmoil by a US election. Diplomats ultimately couldn’t agree on much at the 2000 conference at the Hague when the outcome of the election between Vice President Gore and George W. Bush was unclear. 
 
 Ambitious carbon targets in doubt 
 
 Many negotiators and environmental activists cautioned against reading the Trump effect as a deal-killer for the 11-month-old Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, or a more aspirational target of 1.5 degrees. 
 
 But they still said meeting the emissions reduction commitment President Obama made in Paris to slash US emissions between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 is now in jeopardy. 
 
 “It’s up to the countries how they want to respond,” Kreider told the Christian Science Monitor. “I think that in Paris we got over this hump and countries decided this was in their national interest. This election will test that.” 
 
 Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund, said that while “the window of opportunity is very short,” the 1.5 degrees goal is still possible. 
 
 “I do not think that is dead,” she said during the press conference. 
 
 But that mark would be difficult to achieve even without a looming Trump presidency. Current global commitments would still allow global temperatures to increase by 3.4 degrees at century’s end, according to estimates by the United Nations Environmental Program. 
 
 Trump wants to kill an Obama administration rule to limit carbon emissions from power plants, which is tied up in the federal courts. Scrapping the regulation would require a separate rulemaking that also would undoubtedly end up in court – though with a current Supreme Court vacancy and Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, the high court may tilt to the right. Meeting the nation’s emissions target without that regulation, or another policy to drastically crunch carbon, would be difficult. 
 
 And beyond that Clean Power Plan, other new climate policies would be needed to reach the US target for emissions, experts say. That doesn’t appear to be on Trump’s agenda. 
 
 "I hope the climatologists are as wrong as the pollsters because the US is going to do zippo to combat climate change," tweeted James Pethokoukis, a fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. 
 
 The president-elect has slammed the Environmental Protection Agency, and the head of Trump’s EPA transition team, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is skeptical that human activity drives climate change. Trump also has said he wants to scrap all federal funding on clean energy while boosting coal and natural gas jobs, though the two energy sources directly compete with each other in the US electricity system. 
 
 “We cannot pretend that such an outcome would be anything less than disturbing to those of us who care about climate stability and the role of the United States in the world. That said, this was not an election about climate policy or about any policy – this was an election driven by economic insecurity and dislocation. And a decision by the next President to go backward on climate change would only exacerbate those concerns,” Nat Keohane, vice president of global climate with the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. 
 
 'A single man cannot stop it' 
 
 With Republicans controlling both the White House and Congress, it’s also doubtful the US will OK financial aid the Obama administration has said it would send to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change. 
 
 Still, Mr. Meyer at the Union of Concerned Scientists held out hope that substantive measures under the Paris deal wouldn’t suffer, despite the election’s “psychological” effect on negotiators. 
 
 Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, a negotiator from the Democratic Republic of Congo and chairman of the group of least developed countries at the conference, told the Monitor that he is remaining “optimistic” that a President Trump departs from “worrisome” comments he made as candidate Trump. 
 
 “There is a movement,” he said. “A single man cannot stop it.” 
 
 As far as clean energy goes, prices for solar have plummeted enough to keep projects flowing. US tax incentives for wind and solar energy are already on track to phase out through 2019 and 2021, respectively. Federal funding for basic research continues to enjoy bipartisan support, though in the US environmental groups fear more of those increasingly scarce dollars will shift toward fossil fuels. 
 
 State and regional policies, along with businesses, are also likely to continue chipping away at emissions, says Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. She says that’s what happened under former conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who slow-walked his country’s action to curb emissions to help the country’s oil sands industry. 
 
 Pressure on Trump from outside US 
 
 On top of all that, the international pressure to remain in the Paris deal is significant. Even China, which was long considered a laggard on the issue, has warned Trump against nixing the US commitment made last year. 
 
 The Paris agreement also has entered into force. That means Trump can only signal a US exit from the deal after three years, with an actual departure occurring a year after that in 2020. Or he may be able to withdraw from the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, giving an official goodbye to the UN climate effort as early as 2018, climate-policy experts say. [Editor's note: This paragraph has been changed to correct the time sequences involved in a possible withdrawal from the Paris agreement.] 
 
 Many delegates said they expect international pressure and some policy inertia will keep a Trump presidency from straying too far from the Paris deal. 
 
 And some environmental groups here said they’re hopeful Trump will simply decide tackling climate change is in his best interest. 
 
 It’s perhaps a long hope, given his previous statements and the Republican Congress’ record on climate. But just hours after the election has concluded, the idea of hope is what’s on offer here. 
 
 “It definitely will be more difficult,” Katherine Egland, chairman of environmental and climate justice with the NAACP, told the Monitor in Marrakech. “But I do believe president-elect Trump has an opportunity to grow.” 
 
 Reporting for this story was supported by the International Reporting Project.
– Donald Trump has described climate change as a hoax and a fraud—but he has inadvertently done more than most to bring about worldwide agreement on the issue. The New York Times reports that fear of a Trump presidency has helped United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon persuade more countries to ratify the Paris climate pact, which is now expected to enter legal force by the end of this year. Trump has vowed to pull the US out of the pact—but President Obama has already ratified the deal, and the withdrawal process takes four years. A round-up of coverage: The AP reports that 30 more countries are expected to join the Paris deal this week, bringing it much closer to the target of 55 countries representing at least 55% of emissions. When that target is hit, the deal will officially come into force. Some 375 scientists from the National Academy of Sciences and foreign affiliates—including Stephen Hawking and almost 30 other Nobel Prize winners—signed an open letter Tuesday criticizing Trump's pledge to pull the US out of the deal, reports Reuters. The move "would send a clear signal to the rest of the world: 'The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change,'" they wrote. Climate Central reports that the deal won't be completely "Trump-proof" even if it comes into effect soon. Even if withdrawal takes years, he will be able to undermine it by abandoning plans to reduce pollution. Trump has already said he plans to get rid of the EPA. The Guardian reports that climate change hasn't been as big an election issue as some had expected: Since winning the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton is mentioning the issue a lot less, with roughly one mention per five speeches, compared to one in two before the endorsement.