For environmentalists mourning the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris treaty on climate change, Lucia Green-Weiskel says not to worry: it’s probably not the end of the world.
Backing out of what she calls “the thinnest possible deal” may be the end of the leadership role the U.S. has tried to play, which may even play out better for those working toward a genuine solution to halt climate change, said Green-Weiskel. The Leverett native has been a lead organizer for a Chinese-based nongovernmental organization’s delegation to climate talks in Copenhagen, Cancun and Paris.
“I understand why people would feel that knife dagger through the chest feeling,” she said of Trump’s announcement last week that he would withdraw from the nonbinding 2015 Paris Agreement,” said Green-Weiskel. She was a delegate to the Paris talks, but did not attend — as she had in Copenhagen in 2009 — because she was on maternity leave.
Green-Weiskel stayed active in the cause by planning and organizing the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation’s side events and distributing passes to Chinese academics, government officials and business leaders attending or speaking at the conference. She said she understands there are plenty of ways of looking at what last week’s pullout meant.
“There’s a lot to process,” she said. “A lot of people are very heartbroken: people who care about the environment, people who wanted to see us be a leader abroad, who saw Obama’s actions at Paris and before that. There were some very pleasing optics to that whole thing — the pledges, the photo-op with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping just before the conference, that we brought China onboard. That rung true, and felt like the right role we wanted to take, being leaders taking a strong position, making concrete commitments at home to reduce emissions.”
Green-Weiskel praised Obama’s successes in developing a Clean Power Plan, regulating methane emissions and setting better fuel standards — “the three pillars of Obama’s legacy on the environment.”
Yet, she added, “That deal in Paris was so inadequate, it was hardly anything at all. The agreement was so watered down, so destroyed specifically by U.S. participation in the deal, that it’s hard to really shed any tears. It was like, ‘Let’s just agree, to agree to something.’”
Green-Weiskel attended Leverett Elementary School and Amherst-Pelham Regional High School and received a degree in international relations from Hampshire College and a master’s in Asian Politics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She teaches political science at Johnson State College in Vermont and is a consultant with the Beijing-based NGO.
Watching the process as part of the annual United Nations climate change conferences has been a roller-coaster ride for Green-Weiskel, especially after being elated by Obama’s declaration, even before he became president, that climate would be a centerpiece of his administration, with the United States restoring its role as a world leader on the global crisis that the George W. Bush administration had denied being real.
“Everyone was leaping for joy,” she recalls telling National Public Radio’s “This American Life” at the time. “It was just such a different time, such a juxtaposition to now. I look back on the incremental destruction of the deal (the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was not ratified by this country) that was really depressing.”
She watched at Copenhagen as the beginning of the Obama administration began to “eat away at that deal,” which included specific targets for different groups of countries with a “common but differentiated responsibilities” clause.
She said the draft agreements she worked on for the summits in Copenhagen, Bali and Cancun were more ambitious than what the U.S. agreed to in Paris, where “the teeth of the deal were completely knocked out, and it was the U.S. that sabotaged the deal … and basically gutted the strongest point” to set legally binding targets — a drawing card for China, India, South Africa and the G7 countries. “The United States was basically representing the oil industry, not the people, and saying the only way we could enter this deal is if we make the deal mean nothing.”
Green-Weiskel noted that the Paris agreement calls on each country to set its own targets, with no bearing to each other and no penalties. She compared it to a dieting group that starts off with a strict agreement on how much weight to lose, and then finally agreeing to simply do what they can to lose some weight.
“Obama came up with a clever idea,” the 38-year-old negotiations specialist said. “‘Instead of rising to the action call, the ambition that underpins these agreements, let’s destroy the agreements, then sign them.
“So seeing Trump pull out is kind of like, ‘Well, to hell with it!’ Maybe the agreement itself is better off without the U.S.,” Green-Weiskel added, “with some reluctance.”
She believes other countries have seen the United States as a rogue player, one that without which they can reach their own agreement, with China playing a growing leadership role politically and as a long-term investor in green energy technologies and in moving away from fossil fuels, marketing to and strongly affecting the future of developing countries.
And with other nations moving forward on their own reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, along with a coalition of states and cities in this country, she added, “I don’t think this is the end of the fight against climate change, but it changes the conversation, it changes the U.S. role in it drastically. It raises the question … Will we see the rest of the world footloose and fancy free — the U.S. has been holding back this process for so long, maybe the process will go more smoothly without us?”
There are plenty of reasons for the world’s nations to move in the right direction other than U.S. leadership, she said.
“They are all doing what they need to be doing to fight climate change, they’re all on board, there is a huge amount of support internationally,” she said. “More and more these other countries, China in particular, have their own reasons. … All of those things will continue to happen.”
But Green-Weiskel does agree with those who say last week’s decision does represent “Trump’s declaring war on the Earth. I think that’s how we should interpret this move,” along with a symbolic stab at Obama, whose domestic policies aimed at stopping climate change are also being threatened.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, she said, are “devastating for those of us who care about the environment.”
It’s clear, she said, that the future of the coal industry is much bleaker than that of the renewable energy sector, with China leading the way. She made clear that the NGO she works for is wholly independent from the Chinese government.
Because the withdrawal process from the Paris agreement will take three years, Green-Weiskel said, “Unless he’s elected to another four years, it will mean kicking that to the next administration, or guaranteeing it will be an election issue.”
And as the UN-led climate change conferences continue each December, she added, the U.S. withdrawal means the country has removed itself from consideration as a serious player.
“If I were in Trump’s position, I’d want somebody speaking my point of view there. Otherwise, those decisions will be made without the U.S. … That’s one way it will definitely backfire against Trump.”
You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 269