UNNECESSARY AND HARMFUL
"The president's justifications for leaving the agreement are also just plain
First, contrary to the president's assertions, America's hands are not tied and its sovereignty is not compromised by the Paris climate pact. The Paris agreement is an accord, not a treaty, which means it's voluntary.
The genius (and reality) of the Paris agreement is that it requires no particular policies at all — nor are the emissions targets that countries committed to legally binding.
Trump admitted as much in the Rose Garden, referring to the accord's "nonbinding" nature. If the president genuinely thinks America's argets are too onerous, he can simply adjust them (although we believe it would be shortsighted for the administration to do so). There is no need to exit the Paris accord in search of a "better deal."
Given the voluntary nature of the agreement, pulling out of the Paris deal in a fit of pique is an empty gesture, unless that gesture is meant to be a slap in the face to every single U.S. ally and partner in the world."
The annoucement by President Trump to renounce the Paris Climate Agreement is both unnecessary and harmful. As the above quote from the analysis in Foreign Policy - attached to this item - makes clear, there was no need for it. The agreement was voluntary in nature. Trump's message is foolhardy. It announces America's abdication from world leadership, to China!. It has disastrous consequence for the United States and the world. It tells us that we should no longer trust the United States and no one else for that matter.
This fifth and final volume offers a critical assessment of the state of the law of nations. In the twenty first century the world needs true global law anchored in the dignity of the human person rather than weak international law built on the interests of major sovereign states.
Footprints of the 20th Century
The peaceful collapse of the Soviet totalitarian, communist system has been a watershed of historic proportions in Europe and the world. In 1989, unexpectedly, Communism and the Cold War were behind us, they were bad and should be forgotten. The immediate post-1989 world presented itself as a new era of organised forgetting, as neither East nor West were interested in examining the prolonged period of acquiescence in absurdities.