Paris was yesterday

It’s official. President Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris agreement. Here’s the story in the Washington Post. You can almost see tears being shed by reporters Philip Rucker and Chris Mooney.

The White House’s written statement to reporters says:

The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans, and the President’s action today is keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first. The Accord was negotiated poorly by the Obama Administration and signed out of desperation.

BAD means really bad.

Tom Steyer, the unhinged leftist billionaire had a statement of his own:

If Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris Agreement he will be committing a traitorous act of war against the American people.

Yes, that’s right, “a traitrous act of war against the American people.” The left has lost the ability to hear itself.

The EU’s Jean-Claude Juncker took a different, but nonetheless shrill line. He declared:

The vacuum that would be created [by the U.S. dropping out of the Paris agreement] has to be filled, and Europe has aspirations for a natural leadership in this whole process. . . .,” said Juncker. …

I’m meeting tonight and tomorrow the Chinese prime minister in Brussels and we need to talk about this with the Chinese. We have explained to [President] Trump in Taormina [Sicily] it wouldn’t be good for the world and the U.S. if the U.S. took a step back from the world stage because vacuum will be replaced and the Chinese are pushing to take over the lead.

Juncker doesn’t explain why Europe can’t lead. But in the unlikely event that the Chinese truly want to lead in the area of saddling industry with requirements that likely will have, at best, only a tiny impact on the climate, I don’t see a problem. Indeed, China should lead. Its air is scarcely breathable in some regions; air quality in the U.S. is generally good.

Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government commends President Trump’s decision here. His bottom line is that Paris was a job-killer:

Under Paris, the jobs we need to create cannot exist here. Under Paris, we cannot increase manufacturing here and we cannot get coal miners back to work. Under Paris, we cannot expand our power grid and rid ourselves of these self-inflicted regulatory wounds.

Paris was an obstacle to getting Americans back to work, and for that reason alone it had to go.

Steve views the Paris agreement as less consequential in itself. However, he argues that “if we don’t drive a stake through the heart of the Paris Accord, like the tax code after every partial reform, climate diplomacy will spring back to life with fresh rounds of corruption and coercion under a future president.”

Either way, I think President Trump made the right call.

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