Occam's Razor

Yep, President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement was reckless, stupid and deeply counterproductive, both to our country and to the planet. Bear in mind that until yesterday the only countries that hadn’t signed the accord were Syria and Nicaragua, and Nicaragua refused to sign because it didn’t go far enough. Syria is in a state of constant civil war, so it’s not too surprising they didn’t make it a priority. So essentially the whole world was in agreement until Trump decided to pull the United States out.

It’s hard to see any good news in this, but in a way there is some good news here. It’s not because what Trump is doing is right. It’s because it quite unlikely to actually happen. Like with Great Britain and Brexit, this is not an easy agreement to walk away from. It will take 3-4 years by which time it will become part of the brouhaha of the next presidential election.

Like many, I was infamous in predicting Hillary Clinton would win last year, so perhaps it’s dangerous to predict that Trump won’t win reelection in 2020. This assumes he does not resign or is removed from office before then, either of which is more likely. In any event when your approval rating is at best 40% just four months into your term in office and then you take climate actions that are opposed widely by most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, you are effectively digging your own political grave faster. This means that you are reaching the point where you can’t climb out of it on your own sooner rather than later too.

Trump hasn’t learned one of the fundamental lessons of leadership, and this decision is more evidence that suggests he never will. Trump has confused taking decisive and unpopular actions with demonstrating leadership. When such actions are necessary for a leader, it’s up to the leader to make a broad and convincing case for his actions to the public based on tangible evidence.

Here Trump failed again yesterday. His rationale in fact argued for just the opposite. Getting out of the climate agreement does not create jobs; it increases the likelihood that we will lose jobs by putting us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. Our capitalist economy is built on creative destruction: less efficient ways of doing things give way to more efficient ways of doing things, ways that hopefully are led by American ingenuity, such as Edison’s invention of the light bulb. Generating electricity from coal is now inefficient. If you have to generate electricity from burning a fuel, it’s much cheaper to use natural gas, and it is cleaner as well.

No power company in the United States will build a coal-fired power plant again, unless for some reason the fundamentals of the energy market change substantially. And since both wind power and solar power are at least as cheap as generating power from natural gas, power companies are going to continue to increase their investment in clean power generation. Not only does it make business sense, it makes for good public relations.

Moreover, as solar panels become cheaper, homeowners will have more incentive to put them up on their roofs too. Who doesn’t like free energy? I have solar panels on my house, and just today got a notification from National Grid that my power bill for last month is $0. We actually put energy into the grid last month, producing more clean energy than we could consume.

Certainly there are other actions the Trump Administration can do and is doing to weaken environmental laws. The EPA is hard at work destroying our environment, but even here there is a process requiring public comment that makes it hard to change regulations quickly. Power companies that take advantages of these changes to pollute more are likely to get protests as well as bad press. It’s likely that the impact of these changes will be minimal and they will be checked by legislation when Democrats regain control of houses of Congress. Also Trump’s actions are spurring many states to become more aggressive in combating climate change.

So the main impact of this decision will be to increase opposition to these changes. With every unpopular decision at best Trump maintains his floor of committed voters but empowers the opposition to become more politically engaged. My wife and I will be part of multitudes participating in a local March for Truth tomorrow. That and the fact that his hardcore supporters are literally dying off (because they tend to be senior citizens) strongly suggest that his actions to halt progress will be fleeting and ultimately unsuccessful.

I don’t take anything for granted, however, which is why I will be marching tomorrow regardless. This will be my second march in two months, with my last previous march back in 2003 shortly before the Iraq War. I am hardly alone. Trump is almost single handedly creating the whirlwind that should ultimately end the Republican Party, or at least its most recent ultra-conservative manifestation.

So while the United States will go through a process to get out of the Paris Climate Agreement, in the end it probably won’t happen. And if it does it is likely we will rejoin them when the White House is again in Democratic hands. Democrats running for office now have an easy way to get votes. They simply have to say, “If you elect me, I will work to have the United States rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. And I will work to make the United States a leader in environmental change again.” Given that a majority of Republicans agree, it’s a compelling reason for them to break ranks.