PARIS, France, June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — President Trump made good on a major campaign promise today, announcing that the U.S. will “cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord,” commonly called the Paris Climate Agreement.
The agreement seeks to reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions with quotas enforced by taxes and subsidies for poorer countries.
Pro-life organizations opposed the Paris Climate Agreement because they say it was pro-abortion. Voice of the Family said “the agreement contains language designed to promote abortion and contraception.”
The Paris agreement calls for countries to “promote … gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity,” among other things. These phrases, pro-lifers say, are common to U.N. documents as euphemisms for the promotion of homosexuality and abortion.
The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals lists 17 major goals with 169 subsidiary “targets” to be funded. One major goal is “gender equality” to “empower all women and girls.” Its “target” to be funded is to “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.”
Other U.N. documents also use “gender equality” and “empowerment of women” to mean the promotion of abortion.
The president focused on economic reasons for his decision, explaining that the Obama-negotiated agreement put U.S. employers and employees at a “permanent disadvantage” with China, India, and other countries. He said the agreement would “punish” his country with “onerous energy restrictions” that would slow the nation's economic recovery from its recession under Obama.
The president also pointed out that the agreement places an unfair financial burden on the U.S., which has already reduced its carbon-dioxide emissions by 12 percent since 2006 and is already a Clean Energy leader.
Critics of the agreement say it would ultimately cost the U.S. $3 trillion and also 6.5 million industrial and manufacturing sector jobs. Furthermore, the agreement would punish the U.S. for emissions but allow other countries such as China to get away with heavy emissions. In fact, critics claim that under the Paris Agreement China will actually increase emissions until 2030.
“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States,” Trump explained.
Trump criticized the agreement's Green Climate Fund, which seeks to take $100 billion from affluent countries to subsidize poorer countries' climate change efforts. “This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining financial advantage over the United States,” he reasoned.
The one concession Trump offered was an openness to negotiating a new agreement that would be less burdensome to U.S. companies. “We’re getting out,” Trump characteristically blurted, “but we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.”
Liberal politicians, environmentalists and globalists condemned the president's move. Former Vice President Al Gore called it “reckless and indefensible.” Former President Barack Obama issued a statement charging, “This administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future.” Democrat politicians called it a “betrayal,” “traitorous,” and “one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our nation's history.” Environmentalists called Trump’s nation a “climate deadbeat” and accused Trump himself of having “total contempt for our planet's future.”
The Vatican entered the climate agreement fray as well. Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, characterized Trump's decision as “a huge slap in the face for us” and “a disaster for everyone.”
But other Roman Catholic leaders disputed Sorondo's characterization. Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute told Church Militant, “Bishop Sorondo's claim that this is a slap in the face is absurd and hypocritical.”
“Not only is so-called man-made global climate change not settled science, but let's not forget that it was Bishop Sorondo who betrayed the Church and the entire pro-life movement by hosting a cadre of population-control enthusiasts in a Vatican-sponsored meeting. It was Bishop Sorondo who invited pro-abortion socialist Bernie Sanders to attend a Vatican meeting during the U.S. presidential campaign,” Hichborn said.
“Just exactly who is slapping whom in the face here?” he asked. “If Bishop Sorondo cared as much for souls as he seems to care for trees, perhaps the Church wouldn't be facing the crisis of faith She now faces.”
More than 190 nations signed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 and another 147 joined since then, and so pressure on the president to acquiesce was at an all-time high. His own administration was divided on whether to keep or dump the agreement.
The president said he will stick to the agreement's withdrawal process, which will not be completed until after the next presidential election.