Ex-Obama climate chief hits Trump for pledge to undo Paris deal

President Obama’s former international climate negotiator is calling Donald Trump’s proposal to negate the Paris climate agreement “wrongheaded” and urging his opponents to take his promises seriously. 

In a Washington Post op-ed, former U.S. special envoy for climate change Todd Stern questioned whether Trump would be able to cancel the Paris deal, which he has promised twice to do if elected president.

{mosads}Stern wrote that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, “couldn’t do that even if he were foolish enough to try,” noting that the U.S. alone can’t undo what 190 nations agreed to do last year. 

“The United States has no power to cancel it,” Stern wrote. “This isn’t reality TV. You can’t tell sovereign leaders around the world ‘you’re fired,’ and you can’t tell them a multilateral agreement they just entered is canceled.”

President Obama and other world leaders agreed in December to work together to limit greenhouse gas emissions around the world, with each setting individual reduction goals to work toward. 

Trump argues such a set-up amounts to “foreign bureaucrats” having control over domestic energy use, a charge Stern called “ludicrous.” Trump said the deal gives other countries a leg up, economically, over the United States, and has said that, at minimum, the deal should be renegotiated, or that the U.S. should pull out entirely.

Stern said such a plan is “stunningly misguided,” saying climate change has the chance to be more disruptive for “human life and national security” than any other issue except nuclear war.

“Climate change is happening now, intensively, all over the world,” he wrote. “It’s getting worse. We can’t hope to contain it without joint global action. The Paris Agreement is our vehicle for doing that. Trump would have us walk away? Really?”

Stern warned readers to take Trump seriously and not dismiss his promises to pull out of the deal.

“He is effectively the Republican candidate for president,” Stern wrote. “Don’t make excuses for his words or assume he doesn’t mean them. We’re playing for keeps now.”

Stern left his post at the State Department earlier this year. His successor, Jonathan Pershing, said in April that “there is some concern globally” about what the United States might do on climate change should a Republican win November’s presidential election.