President Donald Trump has chosen a cowardly path of ignorance, withdrawing America from the global climate community as the world hurtles toward the brink of irreversible climate disaster. On June 1, 2017 — two years ago this week — President Trump announced his plan to pull out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, abandoning American leadership on the greatest crisis facing our nation and our planet.
Trump’s withdrawal sent a clear message to the world: Under his leadership the world can no longer rely on America to pull its weight in responding to this global crisis, or to step up and help those most vulnerable right now to climate impacts. Trump has built a foreign policy based on isolationism and xenophobia. And through his friendships with dictators, Trump has deliberately sabotaged America’s domestic climate progress, and effectively handed U.S. climate policy over to polluters and fossil fuel executives.
States and cities have stepped up to fill the void, including with the U.S. Climate Alliance co-founded by Governor Inslee on the same day President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement. We can turn the tide, but we need leadership from Washington, D.C.
Two years after the Paris Agreement withdrawal, we must change course — and fast. It is time for bold American leadership, and a fundamental recalibration of our nation’s posture in the world. That starts with recommitting the United States to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. And while rejoining the Paris Agreement is a crucial first step, it is far from sufficient to meet the challenge before us. Confronting the climate crisis must be the foremost priority for our nation at home, and it must also become central to America’s relationship to the international community.
Governor Inslee’s Global Climate Mobilization is a bold and comprehensive vision for a 21st century American foreign policy that puts climate action front-and-center, for the first time in history. This plan proposes 27 detailed policy initiatives that would return America to a position of international climate leadership and take new, aggressive steps to propel rapid global progress in stabilizing the climate, reversing the damage of pollution, and building sustainable prosperity.