"What is clear is that US withdrawal from Paris weakens the international system, and our ability as a human race to collectively manage our impact on our planetary home," international environmental analyst Neil Tabari said on Thursday.
Trump’s announcement would not significantly affect his administration’s domestic policies on environmental issues since these were already well known, Tabari, who previously led the international wastepicker/GAIA climate change campaign pointed out.
"Everyone knew that the Trump administration would not contribute to the Green Climate Fund; that is a separate matter from withdrawal," Tabari noted.
However, the US move could well create a political atmosphere that left governments around the world feeling freer to despoil their own environments, he warned.
"Some developing countries that still rely on deforestation and cheap fossil fuels for economic growth may be more reluctant to commit to emissions reductions," Tabari said.
But the US move would likely be shrugged off by major nations that refused to allow Washington to dictate their environmental policies to them, Tabari emphasized.
Nations "like China and India are already exceeding their Paris pledges and have indicated that they are not going to be deterred by US action," he said.
The Paris accord had never included binding limits on the amounts of greenhouse gases that nations signing up to it could produce per year, Tabari recalled.
"The Paris Agreement only incorporated targets that each country willingly signed up to: It was never a mechanism that had the ability to force nations to cut emissions or to pay climate debts," he said.
"In my opinion, the primary implications are political rather than climate-related. So the degree to which the US will reduce emissions will be determined by domestic policy and changes in technology and energy markets, not by changes in the international agreement," he said.
Woodrow Wilson Center senior Asia analyst Shihoko Goto told Sputnik Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Accords would have serious longer term reverberations.
"The biggest significance is what this means for US leadership in the world in the longer term. It is of course an agreement on climate change," she said. "But it was a groundbreaking effort to find a common cause for global unity that transcends differences."
Trump’s move would have significant repercussions on US standing around the world, Goto predicted.
"The pact itself of course move forward without the US: But it is a tangible indication of Washington's willingness now to create its own rules set by its own values. US leadership in the international arena will undoubtedly be redefined by this decision," she concluded.
The Paris Accords might survive Trump’s decision to leave them, Goto suggested.
