No More Pencils

We’ve been here before.

President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on June 1, 2017, citing mostly economic worries. The formal withdrawal process began in November 2019 and was completed in November 2020.

He argued that the agreement was disadvantageous to the United States and that it would harm American workers, businesses, and taxpayers.

He claimed the agreement imposed unfair economic burdens on the U.S. while allowing countries like China and India to continue increasing their emissions.

He argued that because of stringent emission reduction commitments, the U.S. would lose millions of jobs in manufacturing, coal, and natural gas.

He stated that the agreement gave other countries a competitive edge by placing stricter requirements on the U.S. while it was less demanding on developing countries, allowing them to grow their economies at a faster rate.

He cited estimates that the Paris Agreement would cost the U.S. $3 trillion in GDP and lead to the loss of 6.5 million industrial jobs by 2040.

He argued that adhering to the agreement would lead to higher energy costs for Americans.

He said that the agreement undermined U.S. sovereignty by allowing foreign entities to influence domestic energy policies.

He said it was not in America’s interests to allow international bodies judging the U.S. on whether it was meeting its commitments.

He argued that even if all countries met their targets, the agreement would have a minimal impact on reducing global temperatures and that the costs of compliance outweighed the potential benefits.

In 2021, after the 2020 election, President Biden signed the U.S. up to the Paris Agreement again and now in 2025 by executive order, President Trump has again withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.

A pertinent question is to ask what has changed in India and China’s emissions policy and in their actual emissions between 2017 and today?

Both China and India have made changes in their emissions policies and actual greenhouse gas emissions since 2017..

In 2020, President Xi Jinping announced China’s aim to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Despite policy commitments, China’s GHG emissions have continued to rise. In 2023, emissions increased by an estimated 3% to 14.9 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent (excluding land use, land-use change, and forestry), driven by increased coal and oil consumption following economic recovery from COVID19 policies and reduced hydropower production due to scarce rainfall that is very probably the result of the climate change.

India pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 45% by 2030. India’s greenhouse gas emissions, however, have increased and in 2023, emissions increased by 6.1% compared to 2022, the largest relative increase among major emitters. The Climate Action Tracker estimates that India’s emissions will reach approximately 4 to 4.3 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030 under current policies.

So since 2017, both China and India increased emissions significantly. And if the argument was about economic advantage and disadvantage, the President Trump would be right. When the result of the inaction or counter-productive action by the U.S. is to hasten the destruction of the planet, then talk of which country is on top becomes laughably irrelevant.

The only justification for continuing on the present trajectory is to argue that science has the best chance of finding a way to combat climate change, and that means not strangling the very science that can result out of a healthy economy.

It’s worth repeating that President Biden argued that the U.S. had to continue with fossil fuels while working to wean the country of them, because otherwise the country would fail on its way to success. And no one in the mainstream gasped in horror at what he said.

The difference with President Trump’s executive order is that everyone believes that it tacitly includes a denial or at best a weak acknowledgment of the danger of climate change. And the knock-on effect of that will ripple around the world.

Al Jazeera was established as an Arabic channel by the Government of Qatar in 1996 and started an English language channel in 2006. It headquarters are in Doha, Qatar.

The impetus for founding it was the closure of the BBC Arabic TV service because of its editorial conflict with its then Saudi partner.

As a side note, BBC Arabic TV is currently operational. The BBC ended its Arabic radio broadcasts in January 2023 to cut costs, but the television service continues to broadcast.

Al Jazeera became important because it could interview factions that others could not, such as the Taliban and Al-Qaida. That brought it into conflict with the US who saw it as having an anti-US bias. And the channel became internationally important with its broadcasts during the Arab Spring, covering protests and uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt have all accused Qatar of sponsoring terrorism, and by extension the accusations cover Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian Authority closed Al Jazeera’s offices in the West Bank temporarily in 2009 after the network alleged that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and others planned to assassinate former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

In the following years the PA has often accused Al Jazeera of being sympathetic to Hamas, the PA’s main political rival.

Then in December 2024, the PA began operations against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in the Jenin refugee camp, trying to get back control in the West Bank. Al Jazeera reported on this and the PA accused it of disseminating misinformation. As a result, on January 1, 2025, the PA suspended of Al Jazeera’s operations in the West Bank.