Elon Musk Joins CEOs Calling For US To Stay in Paris Climate Deal (bloomberg.com)

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Wednesday he would leave President Trump's Business Advisory Council if the White House withdraws from an international agreement aimed at curbing climate change. From a report: The appeals from chief executives such as Tesla's Musk, Tim Cook of Apple and Dow Chemical's Andrew Liveris come as Trump's advisers also present him with closing arguments on the potential risks and rewards of remaining a party to the global pact. Trump also got an earful from foreign leaders and Pope Francis urging him to stay in the agreement during his first international trip as president. Cook placed a call to the White House on Tuesday to urge the president to keep the U.S. in the agreement, according to a person familiar with the move. Liveris was the driving force behind a letter from 30 major company executives backing the deal. And Musk tweeted Wednesday that he has "done all I can to advise directly to" Trump. If the U.S. leaves Paris, Musk said he would drop participation in White House advisory councils. [...] Twenty-five companies, including Intel, Microsoft and PG&E, have signed on to a letter set to run as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Thursday arguing in favor of climate pact.

Comments

Illegal treaty.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that this is a treaty that hasn't been approved by 2/3 of the US senate. By that alone it should be invalid but the stupid "treaty on treaties" made us less sovern.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Geoffrey.landis]

I've not been able to track down to verify, but it appeared this agreement in Paris, would have us in the US paying more "tax"...carbon tax, etc on all sorts of things.

Nope. The Paris agreement commits each nation "to put forward their best efforts."
That's it.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Anubis IV]

I thought you were full of it because I didn't think that was even possible, so I went to look for evidence to the contrary. Instead, it turns out that you're actually right. From The Guardian's reporting of the US ratifying the Paris Agreement last year (emphasis mine):

In Washington, the Republican-controlled Congress has questioned Obama’s legal right to ratify the accord by decree, noting that the constitution grants the Senate a role of “advice and consent” in making treaties.

But the chamber does not ratify treaties, and the US also has increasingly relied on “executive agreements” since the second world war. Those agreements are not submitted to the Senate but are also considered binding in international law.

Wikipedia talks about ratification in the US in a bit more detail, since it's apparently more nuanced than I even realized as an American (again, emphasis mine):

Treaty power is a co-ordinated effort between the Executive branch and the Senate. The President may form and negotiate, but the treaty must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Only after the Senate approves the treaty can the President ratify it. [...]

The US can also enter into international agreements by way of executive agreements. They are not made under the Treaty Clause and do not require ratification of two thirds of the Senate. [...] If the agreement is completely within the President's constitutional powers, it can be made by the President alone without Congressional approval, but it will have the force of an executive order and can be unilaterally revoked by a future President. All types of agreements are treated internationally as "treaties".

So, basically, a President has the authority to make executive agreements that bind their office, inasmuch as those agreements do not extend beyond their authority. Without having looked into the specifics of the Paris Agreement, I don't know if any of its requirements go beyond the authority of what the President alone can do, but if they don't, then Obama's actions were entirely legal, even if they commit future Presidents, such as Trump, to abiding by the terms of the agreement lest they face consequences.

Of course, if the Paris Agreement required anything beyond the President's authority, then you're quite correct about it being an illegal ratification, in which case...well...nothing really changes. Trump would still have the authority to revoke it, but his office would still be bound by it anyway, given that it has already entered into force internationally.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Namarrgon]

Here's a radical thought: why not read it for yourself? It's quite short. Until you do that, you're just echoing the opinions and preconceptions of others.

If you do, you'll note:
  - the word "tax" does not appear in the Agreement
  - the word "must" does not appear in the Agreement

The vast majority of it simply encourages parties to use their best efforts to reduce their domestic emissions. Nowhere does it lay down specifics as to what or how, and nowhere does it commit anyone to anything. It's all very vague and voluntary.

For the paranoid, Articles 9 and 11 are the ones about helping less-developed countries - let me know if you can find any onerous commitments in there. I'll wait.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Namarrgon]

First, if you read that in context, Edenhofer is clearly just reminding people that environmental policy is inextricably tied to economic policy, which seems obvious enough - if you accept that emissions are tied to growth. However, since that 2010 interview, and for the first time in history, that's clearly no longer the case - growth has continued, while emissions have actually slowed. A big reason for that is another thing he's been proved wrong about - gas is cheap now. The dramatic drop in cost of renewables is another.

But none of this is particularly relevant, because the IPCC does not set policies - countries do that. The IPCC's primary role is science - citing the evidence for climate change, and assembling the best predictions we can make, so that countries can make informed policies instead of reacting blindly. The science of what's happening to the planet exists independently of any responses we might choose to take.

Comments like yours are designed as distractions, attempts to discredit the organisations, but they can't make the evidence go away. You can certainly argue for your preferred policies or solutions, but you can't challenge the science with FUD about bureaucracies. Nature doesn't care, and closing your eyes to what's really happening is only going to raise the cost of coping with it.

Re:Does Cook have a moral leg to stand on here?

[Fire_Wraith]

A couple of nitpicks:
One, the battery factory is in Nevada. Musk's car factory is in California, as is his rocket factory.
Two, the pollution this agreement deals with is the sort that has an affect on a global scale, hence the need for a global agreement.
Three, China is actually stating they'll remain in the Paris agreement regardless of what Trump does.

If Trump thinks he can negotiate a better deal, then I'm pretty sure most people, including those CEOs, would be all for him taking a crack at it. What he's considering is nothing of the sort.

Re:Meanwhile in the lithium refinery in china.

[DogDude]

Green energy isn't so green when you see this.

Oh, that's cute. We've got probably 200,000 people dying prematurely from air pollution from auto emissions.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

And if you want to compare apples to apples, Google "Deepwater Horizon".

Re:Trump should send it to the Senete

[swillden]

Considering that Obama never sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, the United states was never a signer of this treaty.

One nit: Treaties are rarely sent to the Senate for ratification. That's the constitutionally-defined process, but getting 2/3 approval of the senate is generally harder than getting a majority in both House and Senate. So usually what we do is to write legislation that contains the treaty terms and pass it through both houses and then on to the White House for signature like any other purely-domestic law. Treaties handled this way are called "congressional-executive agreements", and it's been the usual treaty process for most of the nation's history.

For completeness, in addition to congressional-executive agreements and formal treaties, there is one other type of international agreements the US enters into, called a "sole-executive agreement". Those are signed only by the president, because the terms commit the US only to things that are within the president's power to direct. A common example is treaties related to the behavior of US military forces stationed in other countries, called Status of Forces Agreements. As commander-in-chief, the president can order the military to abide by the agreements, so there's no need for Congress to get involved.