CLIMATE CHANGE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/UN: “When Trump administration officials travel to Germany next month for United Nations climate change discussions, they will face a fundamental contradiction: how to negotiate the terms of a deal they say they’re walking away from.
Like a spouse who demands a divorce but then continues to live at home, the relationship between the United States and other parties to the Paris Agreement is, at best, awkward.
The Trump administration has declared it will abandon the global climate change pact and make no effort to meet its voluntary target to curb planet-warming emissions. On Tuesday, President Trump repeated his claim that former President Obama’s diplomats agreed to bad deals…
Yet the United States cannot formally leave the accord until 2020, and in the interim administration officials have said they will continue to protect American interests, which essentially translates into helping to write the Paris Agreement’s rule book…
This ambiguous position will be on stage at the meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at which representatives of the nearly 200 signatories to the Paris agreement will gather beginning Nov. 6 in Bonn.”
-Lisa Friedman, “New Talks on Paris Climate Pact Are Set, and That’s Awkward for U.S.,” The New York Times online, Oct. 18, 2017