As he heads to the Group of Seven summit and weighs whether to pull the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, President Trump is facing renewed pressure at home and abroad and from the Holy Father to remain a part of the deal.
White House officials say Mr. Trump won’t make a decision on Paris until he returns from the gathering of leading industrial nations, which runs through the weekend. It will be the first time world leaders can make a unified case to the president’s face in support of the agreement.
During his election campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to withdraw from the pact, which requires the U.S. to cut its greenhouse gas emissions at least 26 percent by 2025, a lofty goal by all accounts.
But since taking office, Mr. Trump has wavered on that promise. Internal White House debates over how to proceed have repeatedly delayed a decision, and Mr. Trump has had to contend with vocal critics outside government, including leading American CEOs, imploring him not to retreat from the climate change negotiating table.
Over the past 24 hours, the calls to remain a part of the accord have grown louder and have expanded beyond American shores. Other nations are stressing the national security implications of climate change, and Democratic lawmakers warn that the nation can’t cede to China the economic growth that could come from massive investments in clean energy.
Even Pope Francis entered the fray Wednesday by making the case to Mr. Trump that combating global warming is a moral imperative.
The pontiff presented the president with a signed copy of his 2015 encyclical on climate change, and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson later said that Vatican officials privately lobbied the administration to remain in the Paris deal. Mr. Tillerson stressed that the president hasn’t made a final decision.
Mr. Trump is sure to face similar calls at the G-7 summit. Analysts said the heads of state of Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy will seek to educate the U.S. president about the true dangers of climate change while stressing that the Paris deal represents a key opening shot in the international fight against global warming.
“I think there’s a huge amount at stake for the international community that has championed the Paris agreement to ensure it doesn’t fall apart,” said Sarah Ladislaw, director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
She said the other leaders’ goal may be simply to persuade the U.S. to remain at the table, and they may even tolerate a lower emissions reduction target — a murky notion under the written terms of the deal — as long as Mr. Trump acknowledges that climate change poses a real threat.
“That’s one of the arguments to keep the U.S. at the table in one way, shape or form: to show the Paris agreement was not a fait accompli. It’s not the be all end all,” Ms. Ladislaw said. Mr. Trump could “make people feel good just by staying in the game. So, the bar for success in the international community is quite low.”
Still, it’s not clear whether the White House is willing to meet even that low bar. To persuade the president, international actors are using a host of arguments.
NATO this week released a report that said a lack of action on climate change “will lead to conflict and mass migration in the Middle East and North Africa,” making a clear case to the U.S. that it has a national security interest in fighting global warming. The report explicitly urges nations to “stick to their commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.”
“The potential for conflict between regions affected by climate change should not be ruled out,” said Lilja Alfredsdottir, an Icelandic lawmaker who recently wrote another NATO report on the costs of climate change inaction.
In the case of NATO specifically, analysts say other heads of state could use Mr. Trump’s past positions against him and contend that the U.S., the world’s second-largest polluter, can’t expect the rest of the world to carry the load.
“They are likely to press their case on the basis of all nations must do their fair share, which is the line of reasoning that Mr. Trump is using to press NATO nations to spend more in support of NATO,” said Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. “They may also suggest the possibility of trade sanctions against nations that are not doing their fair share, in the form of border adjustable carbon taxes.”
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have urged Mr. Trump to stick by the agreement or risk isolating the U.S. from the global economy and potentially pushing away billions of dollars in international investments. They also said foreign policy cooperation could be at stake.
“A retreat from Paris would harm the trust, faith and goodwill that America has earned from other nations, and will inevitably harm our ability to work cooperatively to advance our foreign policy goals,” a group of 40 Senate Democrats wrote in a letter Wednesday to the president. “Our economy and our small businesses will miss out on vital investment and job opportunities, while the rest of the world moves forward with trillions of dollars of investment in resilient infrastructure, low-carbon energy, sustainable agriculture and new technologies.”
While Paris supporters are in the spotlight this week, opponents of the deal also are making their last-ditch cases. A group of 10 Republican state attorneys general on Wednesday sent their own letter to the president and urged him to withdraw.
“Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing the harmful energy policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era. the Paris Agreement is a symbol of the Obama Administration’s ’Washington knows best’ approach to governing,” reads a portion of the letter, signed by the attorneys general of West Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Wisconsin and other states.
• Dave Boyer contributed to this report.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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