One year on, international outrage over Trump’s Paris opt-out seems hypocritical – opinion

The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw his country’s support from the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 had outraged many commentators around the world, but the reality in many nations one year later is that they too do not seem determined to take sufficient action to implement the agreement, Markus Schulte von Drach writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The commitments made so far are not enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius as agreed – with or without the US on board,” he says. Neither Germany’s emissions reduction plans nor those of the EU are enough, Schulte von Dach writes, adding that the indignation over Trump’s move “was a bit hypocritical, especially from the Europeans”. To overcome this tacit complicity with Trump’s policy, other industrialised nations “need to pursue a policy that dares to demand constraint from people to ensure that future generations do not find a planet that has been plundered and overheated.”

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier The energy transition and climate change  and the CLEW article Merkel calls for honouring Paris deal as climate action at home falters for more information.