Climate Change

As president, I can put no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens. The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States, to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers, who I love, and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lowered wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production. Thus as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.

– President Trump in the White House Rose Garden, June 1, 2017

On June 1, 2017, Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. The goal of the Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial level).[1] The Agreement requires its signatories to meet individual targets for limiting greenhouse gas emission, but there is no enforcement mechanism. It is the world’s first comprehensive climate pact.

Trump’s withdrawal came as a shock to no one. During the 2016 presidential race he campaigned on “Making America Great Again” and fostering domestic renewal by stepping back from the United States’ involvement in the international community. Still, his announcement was met with outrage around the world. Particularly, many political commentators saw his decision as another sign of abandoning American leadership. One Boston Globe article entitled “Trump Abdicates US leadership on Climate Change” concludes, “Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is bad for science-based decision making, national and energy security, and innovation.”[2] To these pundits, Americans are the people hurt most by President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Of course that is not true. It is a well-known fact that the world’s poor are disproportionately impacted by climate change. A 2015 World Bank study entitled “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty” predicts that by 2030 one hundred million more people could sink into extreme poverty due to climate change.[3] Warming temperatures and extreme climates hurt agriculture, driving up food prices. Natural disasters destroy homes and livelihoods. Increased waterborne diseases adversely impact those who have to pay out of pocket for medical care, if they receive care at all. The list goes on. The world’s wealthiest can adapt to climate change. For example, in 2016 Netherlands completed the “Maeslant Barrier,” a $500 billion moving storm surge barrier to protect Rotterdam from everything up to a one-in-10,000 year storm.[4] Since the majority of the Dutch live less than a meter above sea level, the Netherlands is at the forefront of climate change technology. An engineer and tour guide of the new barrier explained, “What we tell the people here in the Netherlands is, if the country is flooded the damage will be at least 700 billion euros. If you instead spend every year one billion euros, you spread the bill over 700 years. That’s, I think, the Dutch way.” While that is great for the Dutch, one billion euros is a luxury few nations can afford.

The Marshall Islands feels the brunt of climate change. With the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, experts predict sea levels will rise one to four feet by the end of the century. Almost all of the Marshall Islands are less than six feet above sea level.[5] Already, frequent flooding is impacting the Marshall Islands, destroying freshwater supplies, washing coastal graves out to sea, and forcing the Marshallese to take refuge in second story buildings to hide from incoming waves.[6]

The rising sea levels pose the imminent possibility that the Marshallese will become climate change refugees. Under the 1986 Compact, Marshallese are free to immigrate to the United States. Already large numbers are moving, creating new communities in places like Hawaii and, surprisingly, Springsdale, Arkansas. But to leave ones home and family is not an easy decision. Liber Anej, a thirty-year-old resident of Ebeye Island, struggles with the dilemma. “I’m the oldest — I can’t leave my parents. But I don’t want my kids to drown here.”

“I feel like we are living underwater” – Liber Anej, Ebeye Island

In 2015, during a meeting with the leaders of five island nations, President Obama said, “I am an island boy. Some of their nations could disappear entirely, and as weather patterns change, we might deal with tens of millions of climate refugees in the Asia-Pacific region.”[7] Calling upon his Hawaiian childhood, Obama expressed an understanding of the dire predicament of the Pacific Islands and the urgency of international action to mitigate climate change. Yet with Trump dropping out of the Paris Climate Agreement, these island nations feel forgotten. These leaders expressed frustration and anger that the US was “abandoning” them after decades of military operations in the Pacific.[8] Yet the President of the Marshall Islands Hilda Heine remained stoic. “We must not give up hope,” she said. “Our children and their children deserve not only to survive, they deserve to thrive.”

In 2015 CNN reporter John D. Sutter traveled to the Marshall Islands to gather their perspectives on rising sea levels. His article, “You’re Making This Island Disappear,” chronicles Marshallese voices. He concludes his article with the video poem “Two Degrees is a Gamble” by Marshallese poet Kathy Jetni-Kijiner. While the predicament is dire, she reminds us, the Marshall Islands are “not yet underwater.”

[1] “Trump’s Speech on Paris Climate Agreement Withdrawal, Annotated,” June 1, 2017.

[2] Ernest J. Moniz, “Trump Abdicates US Leadership on Climate Change,” Boston Globe, June 1, 2017.

[3] Stephane Hallegatte, et al., “Shock Waves, Managing the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty” (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2016), xi.

[4] Chris Bentley, “As Sea Levels Rise, Rotterdam Floats to the Top as an Example of How to Live with Water,” Public Radio International, June 20, 2016.

[5] Coral Davenport, “The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing,” New York Times, December 1, 2015.

[6] John D. Sutter, “Two°: You’re Making This Island Disappear,” CNN, 2015.

[7] “The Road to a Paris Climate Deal,” New York Times, December 2015.

[8] Torsten Blackwood, “Pacific Island Countries at Risk of Being Swallowed by the Sea Accused the US of ‘Abandoning’ Them,” Business Insider, June 2, 2017.