Quote of the Week - Any attempt to scrap the Paris climate agreement would lead to a “diplomatic black eye” for the US.

Quote of the Week - President Obama’s special envoy for climate change has warned Republican presidential hopefuls including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that any attempt to scrap the Paris climate agreement would lead to a “diplomatic black eye” for the US.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Todd Stern also said that a recent supreme court decision to block Barack Obama’s clean power plan would not affect US climate pledges, or plans to formally sign up to the Paris agreement later this year.

Republican candidates such as Trump or Cruz who query climate science on the presidential stump would in practice be “very loathe” to set off the storm that would follow any ditching of the Paris accord, Stern argued.

“Paris as an agreement has such broad acceptance and support around the world from countries of every stripe and region and Paris itself was seen as such a landmark - hard-fought, hard-won - deal that for the US to turn around and say ‘we are withdrawing from Paris’ would inevitably give the country a diplomatic black eye,” he said.

“When President Bush took the US out of Kyoto – which in retrospect was in fact a quite flawed document - he took lots and lots of diplomatic flak and that, I think, would pale in comparison to what would happen if a president took us out of Paris, which is seen as a strong viable structure that all countries have now bought into.” 

Donald Trump warned against scrapping Paris climate deal by Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, Feb 16, 2016

Read original article at 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #8