We asked Jennie Stephens, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy and associate director of Northeastern’s Global Resilience Institute, to explain how the decision to walk away from the accord might impact the nation’s efforts to address climate change as well as the effect it could have on America’s role as a global leader.
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a landmark 2015 agreement between 195 countries to take action to curb global warming.
“The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers,” Trump said at a press conference at the White House. “As president, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens,” he added, noting that the accord left American workers and taxpayers “to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”
We asked Jennie Stephens, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy and associate director of Northeastern’s Global Resilience Institute, to explain how the decision to walk away from the accord might impact the nation’s efforts to address climate change as well as the effect it could have on America’s role as a global leader.
