On June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump officially announced the decision of the United States to unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement. This withdrawal represented the materialization of one of his campaign promises and was based on the negative assessment of the impact of the agreement on the country’s economy. According to Trump, the Paris Agreement would weaken their economy, weaken their sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks and put the US at a permanent disadvantage compared to other countries in the world. According to him, the costs imposed by the agreement are very high, for “billions of dollars that should be invested here in America will be sent to the same countries that have taken away our factories and our jobs.”
Trump’s stance on this issue is also related to a very particular view of international agreements operated on a global scale. To him, the logic of countries competing against each other is the one that should guide the United States’ international policy, not the concurrence around common goals. Therefore, Trump considers it unacceptable that “[…] under the agreement, China will be able to increase its emissions for another 13 years, while we will not. India makes its participation dependent on receiving billions of dollars in aid from developed countries […] The Paris Agreement is very unfair to the US”.
The President’s decision, however, is far from consensual in the country. Actually, the withdrawal of the United States from the climate agreement widened the public controversy around the Government and produced a series of reactions from the most diverse sectors of the American society. Environmental groups, scientists, social movement activists and even some business sectors have promoted intense political mobilizations against Trump and in defense of the compliance with the agreement. The public controversy is another element that affects the popularity of the Government, which, in July 2017, had the approval of only 36% of voters.
Alongside Trump is the powerful lobby of the fossil fuel industry, led by major oil and mining companies, such as ExxonMobil, British Petroleum (BP), Shell, Chevron and Koch Industries. Within Congress alone, this lobby has been investing, on average, more than US$130 million per year. This sector is the main support base for Trump when it comes to environmental issues, and the scope of its intervention goes beyond this legal lobbying activity within the institutional framework of Congress. The Koch brothers, owners of Koch Industries (one of the largest private groups in the country), also have a strong political intervention in the Republican Party. The intervention through the support and funding of candidates aligned with the ultraconservative agenda of the brothers has been altering the correlation of internal forces in the party and had a decisive impact in last year’s elections. According to the New York Times, the Koch brothers’ budget for the election was on the order of US$899 million.
On the other hand, Trump’s negationist positions on the climate issue are fought against by a broad coalition of social and environmental movements. These movements were already very active even before the presidential election. In 2016, the US government suspended the construction of a pipeline on indigenous land, the Dakota Access Pipeline. This decision was a concrete demonstration of the pressure of the movements on Obama Administration regarding environmental issues. Besides that, in the democratic government, confronting the climate issue was also part of a strategy of development and economic recovery that was based on a transition of the energy matrix and industrial structure dependent on renewable energies and technological innovation aimed at sustainability.
The strength of environmental social movements has been proved in major mobilizations. On April 19, the People’s Climate Movement held the Peoples Climate March, which brought together more than 200,000 people in Washington DC and was accompanied, on the same day, by demonstrations in 370 other cities in the country. The Peoples Climate Movement is organized by a coalition of 50 entities and movements, which includes environmentalists, labor unions, pacifists and some cultural, racial, religious and political movements. The organizing committee is articulated with a network of over 500 local and national organizations throughout the United States. This march was not the first one, but it is one more step in a movement that has a long history in the United States. In September 2014, during the United Nations Climate Summit in New York, the coalition mobilized 400,000 people in a march in the city.
The political forces behind the mobilizations are originated in the anti-globalization movements, which have found a space of convergence between the environmental movements and the movements which struggle for social justice in the matter of climate change. These movements, whose fights date back to the anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle at the turn of the century, have been building a joint agenda. One of the milestones in this process of convergence was the United States Social Forum in 2010, and the first most massive expression of this period was the Occupy Wall Street movement, which convulsed the country in 2011. From this process, large coalitions of entities fighting against climate change emerged in a spectrum ranging from the specific fight against global warming, such as 350.org, to a broader scope, such as the Climate Justice Alliance, which links the environmental cause with the struggle for broader social change.
In addition to the resistance related to environmental social movements, Trump’s decision was able to trigger a mobilization of other relevant social and political sectors. The scientific community, the opposition of the Democratic Party and even some relevant business sectors are aligned with the fight against the change of the United States’ stance regarding climate change. These new actors are currently articulated around the We Are Still In movement, launched on the same day that Trump formalized the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement. This movement, whose launching manifesto bears 2,200 signatures of scientists, politicians, artists and entrepreneurs who claim to represent “more than 127 million Americans and US$6.2 trillion in the American economy” postulates that “in the absence of a leadership from Washington, the states, cities, universities, businesses and investors representing a sizable percentage of the US economy will seek to achieve ambitious climate goals, working together to take effective action and ensure that the United States remains a global leader in reducing emissions”.
The numbers are impressive. There are 228 mayors, including those from cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Houston, San Francisco and Washington, and nine governors of the states of California, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Oregon, Virginia and Washington. Signing the manifesto there are also 318 deans and directors of higher education institutions, including the prestigious University of California, New York State University and Columbia University, more than 1,600 companies from all sectors, such as Google, IBM, Adidas, Lego, Lyft, Amazon, Microsoft, Erickson, BASF, Tesla, Nike and a large number of small and medium-sized companies committed to the sustainability agenda.
Another important initiative in this field is the so-called America’s Pledge, a movement launched by California Governor Jerry Brown along with billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Brown, a left-wing Democrat, has pioneered a lot of environmental policies. Since the beginning of the 1970s, during his first administration, he implemented a development policy that sought to achieve economic growth while having environmental sustainability as a policy guideline. His articulation with Bloomberg, who, besides being a media entrepreneur, is also an exponent of the Republican Party (he was mayor of New York City), demonstrates that the appeal of sustainability crosses the political spectrum.
America’s Pledge also aims to establish a commitment from state and local governments and also businesses to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, regardless of the Federal Government’s withdrawal. This is possible given the federative nature of the American political system, in which states and local governments have a strong influence on the decision and implementation of public policies. The alignment of governments and companies, in tune with the demands of social movements, helps to reduce the impact of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.
The conflict over the Paris Agreement is also the expression of a split in the US business sectors. On the one hand are the traditional and conservative forces of the oil and coal industry and on the other hand is a group of economic sectors with a high participation of companies of greater technological intensity, accompanied by a large contingent of small and medium-sized business sectors. The auto industry apparently seeks to maintain a certain distance from both movements, not openly aligning itself with the fossil fuel lobby, but also avoiding engaging in the movement in defense of the agreement.
More than just an intersectoral dispute between distinct economic branches, this polarization around the theme of climate change is the expression of a broader and more global process. The intense technological changes experienced by contemporary capitalism open the way for a structural conflict between the industrial sectors remaining from the second industrial revolution, whose economic importance is declining, and the new dynamic sectors, whose interests and needs are not convergent with those of the traditional ones.
The outcomes of the dispute over the Paris Agreement are still largely unpredictable. The United States’ withdrawal has not shaken the international consensus built so far and apparently will not change the overall situation. Although Trump administration does have the prerogative to eliminate the advances of the industrial and energy policies built during Obama administration, it will surely face significant political and institutional resistance. However, regardless of which of these two paths will prevail, at least one result can already be seen in a very concrete way: the huge problems that the Trump administration is facing to implement its agenda. The conflict surrounding the Paris Agreement has created a common ground for social and environmental movements, progressive political forces and business sectors which is bound to have a significant impact on the US political landscape.
