Paris Agreement April 2016

Tiancheng Peng        

Dallas Bennett

Global 1

Dec. 3, 2016

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement was a commitment made on April 2016 by 192 countries and the European Union to address issues relating to climate change and more specifically to work together towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement required signatories to take actions aimed at lowering their greenhouse emissions (Davenport, 2016). A few months down the line, the U.S. under the incoming administration has threatened to withdraw from the agreement by disregarding the three-year time frame provided by the agreement before a member country can take such an action. Observably, the intended withdrawal by the U.S. from the Paris Agreement would provoke a trade war as other countries move towards forcing the country to comply with international environmental standards.

The threat by the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Agreement would attract a backlash from other countries in form of economic sanctions including but not limited to imposition of carbon tariffs on U.S. imports. Currently, various countries are already considering the possible measures to take after the U.S. came through with its threat to withdraw from the agreement. As seen from the Morocco summit, countries such as Mexico, Canada and France are already considering the next action after the U.S.’s withdraw from the agreement (Davenport, 2016). A trade war between the U.S. and these other countries would hurt their foreign relations and threaten to dismantle other trade agreements between them. Imposition of carbon tariffs on U.S. imports, for instance, may be met by equal measures from the U.S., which would undoubtedly disrupt global trade as well as international relations.

The proposed withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by the U.S. would in itself undermine the underlying tenets of neo-liberalism on which the country’s economy is based on. Jan Nederveen Pieterse deems in his article that “During the past two decades the dominant approach in policy has been neoliberal globalization, not in the sense that it is all there is to globalization, but in the sense that it became global regime” (Pieterse, 667). In this regard, the government action of withdrawing from the agreement would relate negatively with the private sector, since the latter would be forced to shield the consequences of such action by for example incurring huge export costs (Monbiot, 2016). The assumed laissez-faire condition would be undermined, resulting from the fact that the economy would no longer be free of government intervention. In preventing these consequences, transnational NGOs in conjunction with the private sector can lobby against the government forcing it to reconsider its stand on the Agreement and climate change in general. Already, hundreds of companies including Hewlett Packard, General Mills and Starburks are already lobbying against the intended withdraw and pushing the incoming regime towards changing its stance (Kennedy, 2016).  

The Paris Agreements represents one of the many efforts by the global community to establish agreeable standards for guiding global trade and other relations. In essence, it shows commitment by global players to streamline the global environment for sustainable development. In a way, this agreement paves way for increased competition in the global environment as countries push to provide products that have less carbon footprint. Further, the agreement is designed to ensure a level ground for all the countries to compete by establishing a regulatory standard to guide trade relations between member countries (Davenport, 2016). More importantly, the Paris Agreement further strengthens existing relations and paves way for future solidification of global governance.

The proposed withdraw by the U.S. from Paris agreement if effected will have a negative effect on multilateral cooperation between the U.S. and other member countries. On one hand, member countries would be forced to institute economic actions against the U.S. in a bid to propel her towards adopting the terms of the agreement. The U.S. local companies would be free to choose which policies to adopt giving them an advantage over international ones (Mooney, 2016). As a counter measures, member countries would be forced to institute a form of protectionism by for example imposing a carbon tariff on U.S. imports. Any counter measures from the U.S. would only degenerate relations with the other member states especially those states that are over reliant on U.S. imports for economic sustenance.

Over and above, the intention by the U.S. to withdraw from the agreement is orchestrated by the interests of lobby groups led by the Institute for Energy Research that reportedly is a beneficiary from the regime’s funding. Such actors have played an important role in shaping the regimes’ proposed changes in regard to climate and energy (Kennedy, 2016). Lobby groups opposed to carbon tax are pushing the government to back out of the agreement a move which would benefit them by giving them a freedom of choice in regard to the best environmental policy to adopt. On the other end are companies and businesses that are urging the incoming regime to respect the agreement and adhere to its standards in an effort to enhance the competitiveness of local companies.

As far as industrialization has negatively contributed towards global environment, it has also helped in revolutionizing the global economy by cementing on international ties. Professor McCarty mentions in the introduction to Section 12 that “the damaging effect of industrialization on nature was one impetus behind the modern environmental movement” (McCarty, 492). Indeed, the pace of industrialization certainly overpasses the pace of environment movement, worsening the global climate. However, the concern over degenerating environmental and climate conditions has helped bring together different actors with a common goal of reversing the negative environmental impact of industrialization. In addition, the need to standardize the global economy has also seen the rise of other international trade agreements such as NAFTA all of which are aimed at improving trade between partners while at the same time reducing their carbon footprint for a better tomorrow (Davenport, 2016).