A few days after President Trump said the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, a group of political and corporate heavy-hitters announced that they are still in.
The climate flank of the Trump resistance is being led by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. On June 5, Bloomberg — the United Nations secretary general’s special envoy on cities and climate change — published a letter to the U.N. signed by more than 1,200 “mayors, governors, college and university leaders, businesses, and investors” who are “joining forces for the first time to declare that we will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement.” The group’s new website is called WeAreStillIn.com and immodestly claims to represent the collective interest of 120 million Americans and one-third of the nearly $18 trillion U.S. economy.
Bloomberg says the group will
formally quantify these sectors’ aggregate climate actions and submit a report to the UN as “America’s Pledge” to the world under the Paris Agreement. America’s Pledge intends to eventually submit a “Societal Nationally Determined Contribution” to the United Nations, accounting for the efforts of U.S. cities, states, businesses and other subnational actors.
Among the signatories signaling their fealty to a poorly run international organization hostile to American interests are nine states (all of which voted for Hillary Clinton except for North Carolina), 19 state attorneys general, a few hundred university presidents, and a roster of American businesses including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tesla. In a bit of shade-throwing, the mayor of Pittsburgh also signed the letter. (Trump said during his Rose Garden announcement last week that he was elected to represent the “citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”)
This should be an interesting exercise not just in political posturing and global boot-licking, but also to see how this group will appease its many members opposed to two technologies — nuclear energy and agricultural biotechnology (or GMOs) — that are proven to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
One of the key organizers is the Sierra Club, which called Trump’s move a “historic mistake which our grandchildren will look back on with stunned dismay at how a world leader could be so divorced from reality and morality.” But while the Sierra Club pushes for clean energy options to end fossil-fuel use, it remains “unequivocally opposed” to nuclear energy: “Nuclear is no solution to Climate Change and every dollar spent on nuclear is one less dollar spent on truly safe, affordable and renewable energy sources.” The Sierra Club even wants your help to “phase out nuclear as quickly as possible.”