>>So you think after years of negotiation and science there's still a "better" deal out there ? The Chinese aren't idiots .They will know that their pollution levels are beginning to cause significant problems and will be moving to cleaner power sources increasingly in the future. The President has just voted for the past . More significant than the practical pollution issue is the political power change as "America First" increasingly is causing politicians here to stop regarding the US as having a leading role. Be interesting to see how it plays out.

Gotta say- after careful review, I don't fully understand this one. I agree that circumstances have changed since negotiation began 2 decades ago and even since Obama set his ambitious clean energy target. Also I recall the international slating given to the US for pulling out of the prior Kyoto agreement that subsequently was admitted to be faulty and anti-competitive.

Bur under the Paris Accord, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are internally set by each nation and can be modified without penalty. So if Trump is convinced that Obama's 28% reduction target will undermine US competitiveness, it can be changed.

It is true that India can double its coal use by 2030 and even Europe can increase coal use while the US is expected to transition to cleaner energy, which can be expected to disadvantage US industry, but the US has recent availability of cleaner natural gas and might even be able to hit its NDC early with a bit of solar.

India also has an ambitious solar energy goal and clearly doesn't want to keep burning dirty coal to pollute themselves, which also is a big concern of China that has cancelled hundreds of coal burning plants because of serious pollution. Anybody who has stood on the Hong Kong lookout where massive smog occludes the view deeper into China, or remembers the huge cleanup effort needed before the Beijing Olympics, can see that China has every incentive to reduce its pollution.

I suppose that could be an issue for the US- that others gave themselves easy targets and now will beat them to international acclaim while the US target might be harder to hit. FWIW that's also an issue for NZ since most energy already is renewable and the major source of pollution is sheep and cattle farts. ;-) Not easy to improve that. ;-)

Anyway, seems to me that Paris is a symbolic international effort that can't impose anything draconian on the US that could mitigate all Trump's concerns by resetting NDCs. Maybe Trump expects that the squalling would be identical if he did that so it's politically easier to can the whole thing rather than reducing a target. Today's muttering about trade sanctions against the US for pulling out does tend to support Trump's belief that there's an anti-US element to this.

Anyway, it's a shame the US pulled out. I think a good outcome would be for the US to publish progress towards its NDU to show that this wasn't an anti-planet move as some would have it, and that the US is just as committed to a .2 degree reduction in global warming as everybody else.