John Law (9:49)
All right. First up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right supports Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, arguing it was ineffective and doomed to fail regardless of what the US Does. Many also approve of withdrawing from the who, suggesting the organization has become compromised by fealty to China, others saying the US Leaving the Paris agreement is an opportunity for Europe to adopt more realistic climate goals. National Review's editors wrote about forgetting Paris Trump regards the Paris Accord as unfair, one sided and a ripoff. While one sided is an exaggeration, European nations have done more to manage their economies in the interests of Paris than the US has otherwise. The agreement is indeed woefully misbegotten, the editor said. The emphasis placed in the Paris Accord on cutting carbon emissions has also led to a massive reallocation of resources toward renewable and other technologies that were not and are not ready for prime time. Much of that money would have been better devoted to nuclear power adaptation and strengthening resilience to whatever the climate may eventually bring our way. There is another small problem with the Paris Agreement. It is failing and it will continue to fail. Countries are quite predictably not sticking to their commitments, and their failure to abide by them will increase as their commitments become more onerous. The average Global temperature in 2024 was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels, crossing a threshold that Paris was meant to avoid, the editors wrote. Such targets are incompatible with political stability, surging global energy demand and the reality that even as GHG emissions fall in the Western world, they are rising in other poorer countries as they too aim for a better life. In the Washington Examiner, Martin Collop argued the WHO should blame its own failures for Trump's withdrawal. The COVID 19 pandemic exposed the WHO's inadequacies on the global stage. Early in the crisis, the organization echoed Chinese Communist Party propaganda, downplaying the severity of the outbreak and delaying the declaration of a global health emergency Meanwhile, brave whistleblowers in China, including doctors attempting to alert the world to the emerging threat, were silenced, Cullip said. Beyond its communication failures, the WHO's pandemic response was marred by inefficiency and waste. Reports reveal that the organization spent $200 million annually on luxury travel and including first class flights and five star accommodations, a glaring misuse of funds meant to address urgent health crises. Given these systemic problems, the US is justified in reconsidering its relationship with the who. Terminating funding and withdrawing from the organization sends a clear message that American taxpayers will no longer subsidize an institution that prioritizes political agendas over public health, Cullip Ruth. While withdrawing from the who, the US must simultaneously invest in alternative mechanisms for global health collaboration. Bilateral partnerships, regional coalitions and support for non governmental organizations can ensure the US continues to play a leading role in addressing global health challenges without being tethered to a dysfunctional institution. In the Wall Street Journal, Joseph C. Sternberg said Trump gives European leaders an excuse to dump bad policies Mr. Trump's abandonment of the decade old global climate agreement is as strong a signal as Washington can send that the new administration doesn't care about an issue that Europeans have come to understand in quasi religious terms, sternberg wrote. Note, however, that Mr. Trump at least isn't perpetuating the far bigger affront President Biden committed against our European friends lying to them. Mr. Biden acted as though there were a political consensus in America in support of the policies Europeans liked when there was obviously none. The Democrat rejoined the Paris climate deal despite the Senate's refusal over many years to ratify it and Mr. Trump's first attempt to withdraw from it. Mr. Trump, for all his inconsistency as an ally, at least now is telling Europe the truth about America, which is the best thing any US leader could do for them, sternberg said. Europe can't afford its climate commitments, whether the cost is measured in subsidies dispersed by cash strapped governments or economic growth foregone. Yet European voters remain stubbornly committed to the policy goal for which they no longer want to pay. Mr. Trump is offering an off ramp for politicians struggling to manage this cognitive dissonance. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left opposes the WHO withdrawal, but some say Trump and the organization can still reach a compromise. Many criticize the decision to pull out of the Paris agreement and the message it sends about the US's climate commitment. Others say Trump's rapid withdrawal from international agreements is already hurting the global order, the Washington Post's editorial board wrote. Trump's withdrawal from the WHO is a mistake but also an opportunity President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization could severely damage American interests. If his order stands, the US Government will find it more difficult to track and fight infectious diseases around the world. The United States relationships with allies will suffer, and its adversary's influence over the management of viral threats will increase, the board said. Yet it is still possible to avoid these outcomes. The Trump administration could make its withdrawal conditional and use it as leverage to negotiate needed reforms to the whole. Trump is right to point out that the United States funds a larger share of the organization's budget than any of its peers do, including China and India, which have much larger populations. He is also correct to note that during the COVID pandemic, the WHO made critical missteps. But the reforms the WHO needs don't involve addressing past grievances, the board wrote. The United States needs the WHO as much as the WHO needs the United States. America cannot stop pathogens from crossing its borders. It needs international organization to monitor diseases the world over, especially in countries that are unlikely to welcome US Investigators. Meanwhile, the WHO needs the United States not only for its financial support, but also for its public health expertise. In Bloomberg, Mark Gangloff called Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement a moral disgrace. It's tempting to think of ways to play down Trump's decision to abdicate global leadership on climate he's done this all before. The clean energy transition is strong enough to overcome. Maybe China will save us, gangloff said. But when you consider just how starkly isolated the US Will be from the rest of the world on this issue, along with the fact that it is history's most prolific carbon polluter and still the world's biggest economy and second largest carbon emitter after China, you can see Trump's decision for what it a moral disgrace and an act of self sabotage. Trump's sabotage adds momentum to the growing political backlash against climate action around the world, including in the European Union, which has the world's third largest economy and is the world's fourth biggest carbon emitter. Green parties took their heavy losses in parliamentary elections last spring, and climate skeptical far right parties are gaining power, gangloff wrote. It's true that the aims of the Paris Accords are rapidly slipping away, but the Paris Accords have helped focus the world on climate action, which has made some of the direst warming forecasts less likely. In msnbc, Hayes Brown said America's treaty withdrawal whiplash is making the world less safe. The phrase strategic ambiguity is often used to describe American policy toward China and Taiwan, where the US never makes it entirely clear how far it'll go in defending the island from the mainland. But that's a very specific case balancing competing interests what we're seeing from Trump is a much more random ambiguity that is bad for international relations. Withholding clarity gives other actors the chance to fill in the blanks in ways that may lead to misunderstandings that can be downright dangerous, brown wrote. The back and forth over the Paris Agreement and the WHO and whichever other international bodies come under fire next is detrimental to the US in both the short and long run. In the short term, it is entirely self defeating to remove America's diplomats and resources from a pool of resources that are meant to combat truly global threats. Pandemics and climate change don't care about lines drawn on a map, as we've seen over the last five years, brown said. In the long term, treaties and other vehicles of international law are meant to be the antithesis of ambiguity. The liberal rules based order that the United States has overseen since the end of World War II has depended on the idea that these agreements are negotiated in good faith with nations that intend to abide by these words. Alright, let's head over to Will for his take.
