Excellent points.
Via NY Post:
In quitting the Paris Accord, President Trump on Thursday did nothing to shift the course of US environmental policy — not even on carbon emissions. But he did put the world on notice that no president can unilaterally commit this nation to such far-reaching agreements.
The Constitution is clear: No treaty is binding on the US government unless ratified by the Senate. That tanked the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 anti-warming treaty that the Senate rejected 95-0. And it would’ve killed the Paris deal that President Obama signed in 2016 — except that his negotiators shaped an “agreement” that wouldn’t go to the Senate.
But one that still would’ve been used to rewrite US law, if the courts went along. (And a President Hillary Clinton’s judicial picks would have ensured that they did.)
In fact, Trump had already abandoned the Paris goals by junking Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Yet he’s not turning back the clock. He’s just saying no to what Obama sought to impose — a rush to a low-carbon America at huge economic cost.
Under Paris, as Trump noted, the United States would’ve had to close all its coal plants, even as China builds hundreds more — and coal still generates a third of US electricity.