President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement was based on false assertions that adherence to President Obama’s pledges to reduce American CO2 emissions would destroy jobs. While the reduction in the use of coal to generate electricity would eliminate a few thousand jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created if the US embarked on large-sale efforts to increase solar and wind energy and to update the nation’s power grid to accommodate electricity that would be generate in numerous local facilities and that would be produced on an irregular basis as the amount of sunlight and wind velocity shifted from day to day and over seasons.
If there is no real national economic interest in abandoning the Paris accords, why did Trump take that step? There are two principal reasons. First, Trump built his presidential campaign on a rejection of everything President Obama accomplished in office and more broadly a rejection of the expertise of well educated scientists and public officials whom many Trump supporters believe hold them in contempt. Second, Trump was speaking to a consensus in the Republican Party that rejects any actions to prevent global warming. Trump, at least on this issue, is not a bizarre outlier in American politics but firmly in the mainstream of Republican beliefs. Certainly many elected Republicans in Congress don’t really believe that global warming is a hoax or that scientists are part of a vast global conspiracy. Instead, they are responding to financial incentives, in the form of campaign contributions, offered by the oil and coal industries, and by the Koch brothers in particular. Charles and David Koch became two of the ten richest Americans through their investments in oil and are eager to perverse the source of their wealth, even at the cost of the planet’s livability. As the largest contributors to Republican campaigns in the nation, their preferences determine what Trump and Congressional Republicans think about global warming.
Financial incentives, and years of dishonest reporting from conservative media about global warming, ensure that Republican officials won’t change their minds about global warming, and that their supporters will reward them for their dishonest statements and dangerous policies. Therefore the rest of the world should expect that the national government in the US will not do anything to restrict CO2 emissions until the Democrats return to power. Meanwhile the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to increase and the time available to prevent a global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius will shrink.
Is a fatal level of global warming inevitable? World population continues to increase, albeit at a slower pace than in the past two centuries when public health improvements brought mortality rates down dramatically. However, the main danger is not more humans, since most of the increase occurs in countries where energy use remains low, but increases in the standard of living in middle income countries, most significantly China and India. Thus, the real question is whether new energy in the most populous countries will come from oil and coal or from green sources. Fortunately, there have been real and significant improvements in green technology in recent years, partly due to research funding by the US government under President Obama. We can expect investment in environmental research in the US to end under Trump. However, China now is spending vast sums on both innovation and manufacturing capability. China will be able to produce enough solar panels and wind turbines to supply much of the world, and China will build facilities in other countries to further increase supply. The EU also is expanding its production capacity.
While solar panel and windmill production can be centralized, power grids need to be improved within each nation, and that requires even more substantial investment and the cooperation of governments. All of this is feasible, and now it also is less expensive than building new coal and oil powered generators. So what will the governments of the world, besides the US do? The answer does not depend on technology, since green now can out compete carbon fuels. Nor does it depend on governments’ capacities, since all sorts of power generation requires a high level of central coordination, although green energy can be installed on a local basis. Indeed, US cities and state governments will continue to invest in and require green energy even as the national government under Trump works to foster oil and coal.
The choice between carbon and green technology will be determined politically. As we see in the US the oil and coal industry is wealthy and politically powerful and has the capacity to influence or bribe politicians who determine public policy. The coal industry in China also is very powerful and until recently was able to demand loans from state banks to finance the building of ever more coal-fired power plants. The same story can be told about India and numerous other countries. Determined national leaders, especially when mass movements pressure them, can override those industries and withdraw credit from the state and from state-controlled banks, and mandate that new energy comes from green sources.
National politics do not occur in a vacuum. Governments also are influenced by, and seek to shape, geopolitical forces. Some countries are so dependent on oil that they would have to suffer major losses of national income if the world shifted to green energy. We can expect, indeed we already have seen, efforts by such governments to preserve an oil-based global economy. They have done so by manipulating the price of oil to ensure that green energy remains more expensive and by seeking to weaken global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. The US, even though oil is a fairly small industry in terms of the overall economy (but as we have seen the oil industry has disproportionate political power) is now the leading disruptor of global green efforts. Saudi Arabia, Trump’s current favorite country, continually has lowered the price of oil to weaken green competitors. Russia’s stance toward the Paris accord is more favorable than that of the US but it could enter into a real or de facto alliance with the US and OPEC countries to stymie global consensus on green energy. Russia will suffer less than most countries from global warming and its frozen reaches might become prime farmland on a warming planet. Geopolitics and internal national politics, not technology, will determine the fate of the planet.
