* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
With cities, business and everyday people backing a renewable energy shift, Trump's policies of climate denial won't stick
President Trump has taken the world on a dangerous roller coaster ride over whether or not he will keep the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement. Multiple meetings to discuss the agreement have been announced, then canceled. After world leaders urged Trump to stay in the Paris Accord at the G7 Summit last week, stressing the urgency of coordinated global leadership on climate action, President Trump says he’ll finally be making a decision. Yet the decision remains unclear.
The Administration has already caused immense damage to U.S climate leadership. From the proposed slashing of the Environmental Protection Agency in the White House budget to the so-called “American Energy Independence” executive order that lifted the ban on new coal leasing on federal land, these efforts are meant to dismantle climate solutions. The rollbacks have gotten to such a point that even if the U.S stays in the Agreement, the ability to reduce emissions by 28 percent by 2025 will be virtually impossible.
The ideology of climate denial may make the fossil fuel industry billions in the short run, but it will be disaster over the long term. As sea levels continue to rise, droughts and heat waves worsen, and natural disasters intensify, so too will social, political, and economic tensions. The Trump administration’s short-sighted decisions today, in the false name of job creation, will have massive detrimental effects for the future of the most vulnerable in the U.S and the world.
While Trump trashes environmental protections at home and equivocates on Paris abroad, the rest of the world is already taking action. Weary of Trump’s indecisiveness, leaders from the European Union, China, and Canada met in Berlin last Tuesday to discuss how to continue momentum on climate action if the U.S pulls out.
Businesses are moving forward. Dozens of America’s largest companies support staying in the Paris deal, because they understand that the future of their businesses require a shift to a clean energy market. Already hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created through clean energy, such as solar, more so than coal and other dirty energy jobs.
Momentum towards a 100 percent clean energy economy is also growing at the city and regional level. Across the world, over 400 cities have already pledged to cut carbon pollution and build climate resilient communities through the Compact of Mayors. Sixty U.S cities including New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis have set climate targets that are even stronger than the U.S target under the Paris agreement. Atlanta, the largest city in the U.S South, has pledged to transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.
Local efforts in the U.S are already reverberating at the national level. Just before the Peoples Climate March in April, Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders introduced the ‘100 by ‘50 Act’, a piece of legislation that calls for 100 percent clean energy by 2050. While recognizing the legislation likely won’t move under the Trump administration, the Senators and their supporters view this as a ‘roadmap for America.’
Meanwhile, waves of people are taking to the streets to stand by the Paris Agreement and further this commitment. We saw this on April 29th when hundreds of thousands of people marched in Washington D.C and across the country to make clear that reducing emissions and transitioning to a clean energy economy is the only path forward to thrive. Since then, over one million people around the world have signed petitions calling on the Trump Administration to stay in the agreement, with a simple message the the U.S has a responsibility to our planet.
The fight for a just transition away from fossil fuels is being waged on the grassroots level from Kenya to Belarus, the Philippines to Brazil, China to Indonesia and beyond. In Kenya, Green Sun Cities are campaigning to get Nairobi’s universities to use 100 percent renewable energy. In South Africa, the African Climate Reality Project is urging the city of Johannesburg to transition to renewable energy as well. The year-old Global Muslim Climate Network as part of the Clean Energy Mosques Campaign is calling on mosques across the world to take concrete measures to reduce energy consumption and go fossil-free. These efforts show the massive initiative that everyday people are taking on to make a difference.
The arc of history points towards those leaders, local governments, CEOs, and everyday people in the U.S and across the globe who are mapping out plans that are even more ambitious than Paris, creating their own momentum towards a sustainable future. The world won’t be dragged back by a fossil fuel industry puppet in the White House. Through local efforts being initiated globally, we are already sending a message that transition to 100 percent clean and renewable energy for all is unstoppable.
May Boeve is the executive director of 350.org, an international climate change campaign that strives to generate the sense of urgency required to tackle the climate crisis.
