Janetos in The Conversation: Pulling out of Paris Agreement will harm poor in US and abroad

Anthony Janetos, the Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, wrote an op-ed for The Conversation about the implications of President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Prof. Janetos explained that the last several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stated that the impacts of climate change are happening now, and that those impacts will be felt disproportionately by poor populations. The decision to withdraw from the agreement means that the United States will also refuse to make additional contributions to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which invests in clean energy production and adaptation measures in developing countries. “The fact that the world’s largest economy and the largest per capita emitter will decline to take on policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously refuse to contribute to a fund largely devoted to adaptation measures in the world’s poor countries is dangerous and unprecedented,” Janetos wrote.

In addition to Janetos’ piece about the decision’s impact on the poor in the U.S. and abroad, the article featured brief analyses from experts about the impacts on U.S. diplomatic and moral leadership, the economy, and agriculture.

Click here to read the full article.