Why Do We Keep Leaving: America’s Past, Current, and Future Relationship With the Paris Agreement
On January 20, 2025, President Trump pulled the United States out of global climate commitments in the name of “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements” (Executive Office of the President 2025). This is not the first time this has happened, though. In 2017, Trump effectively removed the US from the Paris Agreement, claiming that the agreement was a burden on American corporations and industries (Light 2017). This attempt was unsuccessful as withdrawal from the Paris Agreement requires “four years from a country's invocation of the agreement's withdrawal mechanism” (Pullins & Knijnenburg 2025). This time, however, withdrawal can now happen one year after invocation, so the four-year clause will not act as a protection. This shift in withdrawal procedure exposes the fragility of US climate commitments and forces us to confront a deeper question about our national will to cooperate globally. The Paris Agreement feels like a figment of collective American imagination towards climate solutions, and the question remains: Why do we keep leaving?
The Paris Agreement was originally signed by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015. “Severe droughts, heatwaves, and rainfall” led world leaders to adopt a clear commitment to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (UN Climate Change 2025). The Paris Agreement works on a five-year cycle, with countries submitting nationally determined contributions (NDCs) on either the social or economic level–meant to reflect a higher degree of commitment towards climate change compared to the previous NDC. In 2025, Trump showed the other 195 parties that our NDC was to ignore the issue at hand. Clearly, climate change, pollution, and severe weather effects will not be of large importance to the Trump administration, especially when it comes to American economic competitiveness.
Republicans have avidly defended Trump’s executive order, claiming it protects the US economy. “Paris encourages the U.S. to agree to emission reductions that are both unnecessary from a climate perspective, since we don't control the climate, but which do place substantial costs on Americans while putting the nation at a competitive and geopolitical disadvantage to China” advocates Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute (Spady 2024). However, with a booming green energy sector that employs ten times as many workers as the fossil fuel industry, President Trump’s ill-informed attempt to assert international dominance may harm Americans more than anyone else. As the environment is dying, people work hard to create solutions, reduce pollution, and evolve the green sector. The utter abandonment of the Paris Agreement by America will affect its citizens and the realm of international relations as a whole.
The Argument of the Past
The economic backing for Trump's plan to leave the Paris Agreement today relies on an economic belief system of the past. The market fundamentalist movement that Trump based his decision around was founded in the early 20th century and is an adoption of a totally free market–unfettered by regulations like that of the Paris Agreement (Davino 2025). Trump's removal from the Paris Agreement follows plans outlined thoroughly in Project 2025, a 900-page fundamentalist ideological blueprint. America, and the world, for that matter, are not the same as when market fundamentalism was founded. This economic ideology does not align with the realities of the 21st-century energy economy, where renewables are rapidly outpacing fossil fuels in profitability and job creation.
Michael Pompeo, current Secretary of State, reported why the US left the agreement, stating that “President Trump made the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers” (Pompeo 2019). Trump’s plan to leave is not only based on a flawed environmental economic method but also on flawed data. The Trump administration relies on NERA Economic Consulting data published in 2017 that are based on extreme assumptions. The macroeconomic modeling for this data simplified the US into five regions, eight manufacturing sectors, and another five energy-related sectors–ignoring the growing energy sectors in America. Furthermore, a study produced by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics tells a completely different tale about Trump's data set. They state that the NERA data excludes “all of the economic benefits from policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” and “all of the costs of reducing all greenhouse gases except CO2” (Ward & Bowen 2020). This NERA data set has been shifted to match a past America, one without a booming green energy sector or huge growth in sustainability hiring (Gibson 2024). Even without pointing out the flaws in Trump's foundational data set, his claims about the Paris Agreement’s negative effects on domestic economies are not true. As countries continue to commit to the goals of global climate agreements, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the global green energy market could total over $60 trillion in the next two and a half decades (Schmidt & Guy 2017). Evidently, American workers are not burdened by the Paris Agreement but are gaining access to a whole new field of jobs and potential income. While Trump is correct about the Agreement’s burden on businesses, the way he phrases it could use work. Trump genuinely believes that the Paris Agreement harms the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuels, when contextualized by the potential benefits of booming green energy sectors, renewed interest in climate change, and increased scrutiny of regulatory practice, no longer look like the safer, cheaper fuel source they did 20 years ago (Retallack 2025).
On a global scale, the flaws in fundamentalist economic beliefs flourish. Trump Republicans tread on the side of market fundamentalism which does not bode well with globalization. This is an important distinction as market fundamentalism's spread coincides with globalization, and many of its early supporters used to support a free trade globalized economy. Oren Cass, an economist at American Compass, consulted the “sacred texts” of fundamentalism to see what its original founders would think of modern conservative fundamentalism and found that the founders of economics themselves saw these flaws early on (Cass 2024). Alfred Marshall published Principles of Economics in 1890, a book that still stands as a foundation for understanding free market economics (Henderson n.d.). Cass’s reading of Marshall’s original texts finds that supporters of fundamentalism had “taken but little account of the indirect effects of free trade” and that these texts “don't seem to say what their keepers say they say” (Cass 2024). Cass claims that these original economic texts did not take the economic advantages of green energy that exist today into account. A positive relationship between globalization and green energy means that as trade networks expand, the proliferation of green energy usage does as well, specifically in developing countries (Harris 2024).
Reopening the coal mine is not a hyperbole of Trump's plans, but a promotion he believes to be patriotic and modern. Trump does not believe that the glory days of coal mining in America are over. In 2017, he boasted, “The mines are starting to open up, having a big opening in two weeks. Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places. A big opening of a brand-new mine. It's unheard of. For many, many years that hasn't happened” (Frazier 2017). Of course, Trump did speak in hyperboles, though, and US coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record just two years later (Mead & Brown 2025). He has since repeated these claims, reiterating that coal should and, according to his plans, will be the energy of America. Coal is an energy of the past because the production of renewable energy from solar and hydroelectric sources is rapidly getting cheaper and more efficient (Moseman 2023). Alas, Trump always wants to Make America Great Again, and to him, coal is going to do that.
The Truth of Today
Perhaps the most glaring error in American departure from the Paris Agreement is the negative impacts of the decision on American economic sectors. International agreements towards producing solutions to climate change have bolstered economic growth in the years after signing sustainable development, green energy sectors, and climate law. In other words, the climate change economy is both booming and sustainable (Serin 2024). A study done by the London School Economics found that increases in labor force participation, brand-new technological innovations, and increased demand for green infrastructure mean that the climate change economy is linked to increasing GDP (Serin 2024). Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and subsequently, less focus on green sectors, risks America falling behind substantially both in climate technology and overall potential GDP growth.
The labor force size of green sectors demonstrates that removal from the Paris Agreement could have huge repercussions for workers in certain fields. This workforce includes roles in energy efficiency, renewable energy generation, electric vehicle manufacturing, and battery production. Notably, clean energy jobs grew by 4.5% in 2023–nearly double the overall US employment growth rate (Milman 2024). Exiting the Paris Agreement, while not directly affecting job hiring, skews the focus away from this growing sector, especially considering that employment in the fossil fuel sector is less reliable (Gardner 2024). If Trump truly believed in a free market economy, wouldn’t embracing the green sector be the definition of allowing the market to adapt on its own? Instead, Trump nurtures a notably stagnant fuel source. The IEA reported in 2023 that renewable energy made up 90% of new global power capacity additions (IEA 2024), largely pushed by innovations in China. Perhaps, this is where Trump sees fault in the system, but his doubts are unfounded. While China and other foreign economies also benefit from renewable energy and green sectors, that does not mean that the green sector is our enemy.
In fact, the exact opposite is true–it could be the hope of America to stay in the energy game without relying on foreign mining, domestic mining in national parks (Federman & Tobias 2024), or conflict over fossil fuel sources in Middle Eastern countries (Daragahi 2024). Although the UK remains the leader in most, if not all, renewable energy source innovations, America gained traction under the Biden administration. As a result, more individuals hold jobs that rely on a government and culture that is willing to embrace the new. With approximately 16.2 million Americans working in renewable energy sectors, America pulling out of this commitment risks their jobs with 1,000 EPA employees already being told their jobs are at risk of complete termination (Friedman 2025). Not only that, but we risk losing momentum in the global race of increased patenting and new technology with other countries, notably against China and the UK (Fleming 2021). While this is not a direct consequence of leaving the Paris Agreement, it demonstrates what Trump actually hopes to do by leaving it: reinvesting in fossil fuels and deconstructing the green sector as we know it.
The development of green innovations in America is also at threat of termination and divestment by the American government. The stock prices of renewable energy sources, notably wind and solar, saw huge drops following Trump’s election due to uncertainty by both American and foreign investors alike (Morrison et al. 2025). Already, environmental scientists see substantial effects of government budget cuts. If America does not have to commit to reducing greenhouse gases or carbon emissions, then what's the point of continuing the science that makes innovation possible? The National Science Foundation saw a 10% budget cut and the proposed budget cuts for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could see a third of their budget gone (Freedman & Snyder 2025; Canon 2025). While renewable energy is currently becoming a cheaper, more sustainable alternative, it is not where it needs to be. Renewable energy cannot just become the solution to a rapidly fossil fuel-depreciated earth (Kuo 2019). Innovation and technological funding are key to this outcome. That is why what we do right now matters so much. Today, innovation is happening and green energy is becoming more reliable, but Trump’s attempt to ‘unburden’ Americans by leaving the Paris Agreement only isolates the scientists, engineers, and developers who are making renewable energy and sustainability a reliable possibility of the future (Volcovici 2025).
The Reality of Tomorrow
The environment is in disarray. While Trump may promote the decline of greenhouse gas emissions over recent years, they have been minimal at best. Current projections considering Trump’s policies project a steady increase in energy-related carbon emissions moving into 2026 (EIA 2025). According to the Paris Agreement, America aims to reduce emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030 (Rosen 2025), but already emissions are going from a decline to stagnant. Without an international agreement to guide our emissions, there truly is no need for Trump to make these reductions occur. What is apparent, is that the government pushing back against the green sector will have immediate and apparent repercussions for sustainability and the environment's health as a whole.
At Yosemite National Park, in the spittle of seeping dew that covers El Capitan, an upside-down American flag can be seen swaying (Lozano 2025), a national sign of dire distress—a call for help. The American Eagle is dying, literally. Of 448 eagles surveyed by the US Geological Survey (USGS), 50% were found to be suffering from chronic lead poisoning (DiMella 2024). Lead researcher Todd Katzner stated “In this case, ‘chronic’ means ‘repeated exposure,’ meaning 50% of the eagles were getting exposed to lead again and again” (DiMella 2024). The symbol of freedom and patriotism that the Trump administration loves to promote is threatened by our very own government's actions. The Earth before us is melting, and ideology is being used as a means to ignore it. The climate change that Trump denies accounted for $1 billion in damages over the last 45 years. I would love to cite the article that supports this, but the phrase, “we apologize, but the page or resource for which you were searching does not exist” showed up when I attempted to cite it. The website has likely been purged among many others due to initiatives by the Trump administration (Stone & Simons-Duffin 2025). The article, along with many more, serves as a memory to let go of, or perhaps, one we should hold onto even tighter. Soon, before we as Americans realize it, tomorrow will be today and memories will be all we have.
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