CLIMATE CHANGE/FOREIGN POLICY/OBAMA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Trashing the Paris Agreement made for a great campaign prop at Donald Trump’s rallies, where the climate change accord was portrayed as a product of the out-of-touch, insufferable elites that Trump pledged to sweep from power.
Now the landmark agreement, signed under President Obama, is fast becoming a nuisance for President Trump’s White House.
It is putting the president under increasing pressure from places he may not have expected. His own secretary of State appears to see little upside in the president following through on the signature campaign vow to scrap it. His ambassador to the United Nations is hedging. And titans of industries that Trump promised would be unleashed to create new jobs once freed from the agreement’s constraints are openly hostile to Trump’s plan to put it through the shredder.
Even the American Coal Council has yet to muster a tepid cheer for Trump’s denunciations of the United Nations-sponsored climate plan. As for the power companies Trump warned would be forced by Paris to raise their rates trillions of dollars? Their trade group, the Edison Electric Institute, doesn’t even have a position on the agreement.”
– Evan Halper, “Trump’s vow to scrap the Paris climate change accord faces skepticism from corporations, GOP moderates,” The Los Angeles Times online, Feb. 14, 2017