Andrew Harnik / AP
The White House is spinning the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord by focusing on how Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise, how much it would cost the U.S. to stay in (it's a "BAD" deal for Americans), and how the results from the deal would have been "negligible" anyways, according to documents obtained by Axios.
- BAD deal: "Topline: The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans"
- Keeping promises: "[T]he President's action today is keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first."
- The cost: Meeting the requirements in the Paris deal would cost the U.S. $3 trillion over the next several decades, plus the accord has a "UN Climate Slush Fund underwritten by American taxpayers"
- The lost jobs: By 2040 the economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs
- Claims about coal: "It would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power"
- Where the U.S. stands on clean energy: "The U.S. is ALREADY a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader...Since 2006, CO2 emissions have declined by 12 percent, and are expected to decline."
- The Obama Administration signed the deal "out of desperation," and "the deal was negotiated BADLY, and extracts meaningless commitments from the world's top polluters"
- Negligible results: Even "if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible," according to researchers at MIT.