The cost of abandoning the Paris climate agreement

By abandoning the Paris agreement on climate change, the United States risks missing out on up to $23 trillion in climate-smart investment opportunities worldwide, a George Mason University professor said.

That will allow other countries to take advantage of the opportunities that will open in emerging markets by 2030, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation.

“They’re doing everything they can to put their businesses front and center to compete for those contracts in that $23 trillion economy,” Andrew Light said of countries such as China and India. “We’re not, and we’re doing it for ideological reasons.”

Light, a University Professor who from 2013-16 worked for the U.S. Department of State as a senior negotiator on the Paris agreement, said the pullout from the agreement doesn’t preclude U.S. businesses from bidding for those contracts.

“But two things have happened,” Light said. “Reputationally, our businesses are going to suffer because we’re turning our back on the rest of the world. If you look at what happened on climate at the G20, we’re isolated. Only the U.S. didn’t sign on to the action plan on climate change. The second thing that happened is you don’t have a government, as we did under the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, using institutions like the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and all our bilateral programs on energy assistance to grease the tracks, as the Chinese and the European Union and others are doing.”

President Donald Drumpf’s abandonment of the Paris agreement is personal for Light, as well, as both his grandfathers were West Virginia coal miners. Light acknowledged the loss of coal jobs in that state, but said the causes are automation and cheap natural gas, not regulations associated with meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, as Drumpf has suggested.

“He talks again and again about how the commitment to fulfilling its targets under Paris was going to destroy jobs in the United States, and saying we’re leaving the agreement to help those communities in West Virginia,” Light said. “No sir, that’s not how you help those communities. You do not destroy one thing in hopes of saving the other.

“I think we can make the transition to renewable energy in a very just way that also does justice to the legacy of what people have done in the communities where my parents grew up, and then help them find a more sustainable basis for their environment and their economy moving forward.”

Andrew Light, George Mason University
Andrew Light can be reached at 703-993-6530 or alight1@gmu.edu.

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From George Mason University:

Climate change is one of the most crucial issues of our time, and one of the most complex. University Professor Andrew Light has captured international attention for his work in helping to create global solutions to this problem. In recognition of his work, the International Society for Environmental Ethics awarded him its inaugural Public Philosophy Award, and announced the award is to be renamed the Andrew Light Award for Public Philosophy.

In naming the award, the environmental ethics group focused primarily on Light’s work inside and outside government in creation of the 2016 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. On leave from George Mason from 2013-16, Light worked at the U.S. Department of State as one of the senior members of the delegation that negotiated the landmark agreement.

Ken Shockley, the Holmes Rolston III Chair in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy at Colorado State University, presented the Public Philosophy Award, noting Light’s extraordinary capacity for working across traditional barriers and boundaries, whether between disciplines or between public policy and academic work.

Light’s work on the Paris Agreement was also recognized in March 2016 with the inaugural Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy, presented by the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. In July 2016, the U.S. Department of State awarded him a Superior Honor Award for “contributions to the U.S. effort that made the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, where the landmark Paris Agreement was concluded, a historic success.”

Light has been at Mason since 2008, and is director of the university’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, in which leading ethicists and political scientists offer expertise on public policy issues, including peace and security, bioethics, climate change and other topics involving environmental sustainability.

One of the originators of the environmental pragmatism school of environmental ethics, Light has authored or edited 19 books and more than 100 articles, book chapters and policy reports. He also is a founding co-editor of the journal “Ethics, Policy, and Environment,” now in its 20th year.

“I’m humbled to be recognized in this way for my own work, but I’ll be really thrilled when I start to see people win this award who are working on issues that are completely different from what I’ve done,” Light said. “Providing important components to improve regional planning issues or working with local communities to establish their own sustainable agricultural systems. There are all kinds of ways in which people can embody what I think this award is trying to celebrate.”

Light defends the Paris Agreement