Trump Withdraws U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement To Represent Pittsburgh, A City That Voted Against Him And Vowed Within Hours To Uphold The Agreement Anyway

WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump announced Thursday from the White House Rose Garden that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, the 2015 accord under which nearly 200 nations had voluntarily pledged to reduce the emissions warming the planet, thereby resolving a long-standing concern that the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases was on record as intending to emit slightly fewer of them.

The agreement, administration officials noted, had imposed on the United States the considerable burden of a target the United States had itself selected, enforced by a mechanism consisting of other countries knowing whether it had been met. Under the accord's terms, any nation finding its commitments inconvenient was free to revise them downward at any time, an option the President declined in favor of leaving the building entirely.

"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," Trump told the assembled crowd, citing a city that had voted against him by a margin of roughly four to one and whose mayor pledged within hours to honor the agreement regardless. Officials clarified that the President's objection was not to Pittsburgh specifically but to the broader principle that an American city should not be asked to participate in an effort it had already decided to join.

Because the Paris Agreement contains provisions governing the timing of departures, the withdrawal could not take legal effect until November 4, 2020, the day after the next presidential election, a detail the administration characterized as further proof of the accord's fundamental unfairness to the United States. The intervening three and a half years, during which the country would remain a party to the agreement while announcing that it was not, were described by one official as the period of maximum American freedom.

"The President has liberated the American worker from a framework that asked nothing of him and penalized him in no way," said a source within the administration, who added that the coal industry in particular could now look forward to competing against natural gas and solar power without the additional disadvantage of a press release. The source noted that domestic emissions were nonetheless expected to keep declining for reasons unrelated to the decision, an outcome the administration intended to claim credit for at a later date.

At press time, the President had assured reporters that he would immediately begin negotiating a new and far better climate deal, an effort that, as of his departure from office, had produced no deal, no negotiation, and no further public mention of the subject.