Announcing that the US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, Donald Trump misplaced the blame for what ails the American coal industry and laid a shaky factual foundation for his decision.
:: WHITE HOUSE: The Paris agreement “would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power”.
THE FACTS: The US coal industry was in decline long before the Paris accord was signed in 2015.
The primary cause has been competition from cleaner-burning natural gas, which has been made cheaper and more abundant by hydraulic fracturing.
Electric utilities have been replacing coal plants with gas-fired facilities because they are more efficient and less expensive to operate.
:: TRUMP: No other country “is even close” to the 1 billion dollars (£770 million) the US has paid so far into the UN-managed Green Climate Fund.
THE FACTS: Other governments with smaller economies have invested significant amounts.
The fund has 694 million dollars (£539 million) from Japan, 515 million dollars (£400 million) from Britain, 460 million dollars (£357 million) from Sweden and 420 million dollars (£326 million) from Germany, in addition to contributions from dozens of other countries.
Per capita, some countries are promising much more than the US.
The US pledges so far – including the billion dollars already paid and 2 billion dollars (£1.5 billion) promised by the Obama administration – add up to 9 dollars (£7) per American, compared with 60 dollars (£46) from every Swede and 50 dollars (£38) from each Norwegian.
That is according to figures from the Seoul-based fund channelling money to help poor countries fight and handle climate change.
:: TRUMP: Claims “absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day”, adding “more than a million private-sector jobs”.
THE FACTS: Basically right, but he earns no credit for jobs created in the months before he became president.
To rack up that number, the president had to reach back to October. Even then, private-sector job creation from October to April (171,000 jobs a month) lags slightly behind the pace of job creation for the previous six months (172,000), entirely under Barack Obama.
:: TRUMP: “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”
THE FACTS: That may be so, but Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is not Trump country. It voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in November, favouring her by a margin of 56% to Mr Trump’s 40%.
The city has a climate action plan committing to boost the use of renewable energy.
Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, has been an outspoken supporter of the Paris accord, and tweeted after Mr Trump’s announcement that “as the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future”.
:: WHITE HOUSE: “According to a study by NERA Consulting, meeting the Obama administration’s requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the US economy nearly three trillion dollars over the next several decades. By 2040, our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs – including 3.1 million manufacturing sector jobs.”
THE FACTS: This study was paid for by two groups that have long opposed environmental regulation, the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation.
Both get financial backing from those who profit from the continued burning of fossil fuels.
The latter group has received money from foundations controlled by the Koch brothers, whose company owns refineries and more than 4,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines.
The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting US targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to American businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects.
Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation does not actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.
:: WHITE HOUSE, citing a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “If all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible,” curbing temperature rises by “less than 0.2C in 2100”.
THE FACTS: The co-founder of the MIT programme on climate change says the administration is citing an outdated report, taken out of context.
Jake Jacoby said the actual global impact of meeting targets under the Paris accord would be to curb rising temperatures by 1C, or 1.8F.
“They found a number that made the point they want to make,” Mr Jacoby said. “It’s kind of a debate trick.”
One degree may not sound like much, but Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, says: “Every tenth of a degree increases the number of unprecedented extreme weather events considerably.”
AP
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