Tower Center Academic Director Jim Hollifield and Tower Center Associate Bud Weinstein, also associate director of the SMU Maguire Energy Institute, talked to Dallas Morning News reporter Jill Cowan about President Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Hollifield argues that this is yet another example of Trump disregarding how things are done in foreign policy, or in his words, Trump threw the global playbook “out the window.”
“Gone are the days when the U.S. would take the lead in pursuing global public goods,” he told Cowan.
Aside from the geopolitical effects of withdrawing from the deal, which is supported by nearly 200 countries and ratified by 144, Weinstein weighed in on the effects on the energy industry in Texas. He thinks they will be minimal. The decline in coal energy is hardly related to the United States’ commitment to a climate deal, he said.
“I look at it this way: Carbon emissions have been falling in the U.S. for the last 20 years, not so much because of regulations at the state and federal level but because we’ve been substituting coal power,” Weinstein said.
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