NEWSWEEK 01/21/25
By Michael Shank and US Congressman Raul Grijalva

With 2024 going down as the globe’s hottest year on record, and with devastating fires in California signaling a new climate-changing normal, President Donald Trump and his administration are doing exactly the thing a warming planet doesn’t need. Trump is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, again.

Ten years ago, 195 countries thought it prudent to protect their populations from the increasingly deadly consequences of climate change. And that’s why they joined the Paris Agreement, to work together to limit fossil-fueled global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible. That warming limit was breached in 2024 for the first time ever. And yet President Trump seems willing to put Americans in harm’s way again.

Harm’s way is getting more harmful by the year, with worsening heat waves, droughts, floods, fires, and storms. Climate change poses a clear and present danger, as fires on the West Coast and hurricanes in the Southeast have illustrated in the past year.

The security implications, then, of backing out of the Paris Agreement are dire. Thanks to the air pollution caused in large part by fossil fuels, 7 million people around the world die early each year, and that grim tally includes hundreds of thousands of Americans.

This means more people are dying from fossil fuels than any other culprit out there. If Americans were dying in these numbers at the hands of a threat more visible, like a non-state actor, the White House would quickly and courageously lead the international community into immediate action against this group or any other such adversary.

Yet, we’re continuing to let fossil fuels kill Americans—and in record-high numbers. From that perspective alone, President Trump should support the Paris Agreement and put national security above the interests of his fossil-fueled friends who are responsible for these deaths.

The culprits in this security situation—fossil fuel corporations—are often owned and operated by those connected to the incoming Trump administration. Trump’s billion-dollar kowtowing to oil executives during the campaign, his announcement of climate deniers for Defense and Energy secretary roles, and his plans to claw back unspent green infrastructure dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act all illustrate just how willing his administration is to put Americans in harm’s way.

The good news here is that America adapts all the time to face security challenges. This time, this moment, is no different. The president of the United States should be laser focused on protecting the lives of citizens and getting off deadly fossil fuels as fast as possible.

For these reasons above—including the devastating economic and diplomatic consequences that come from ignoring an international consensus, and the humanitarian consequences of tens of millions of refugees migrating from countries devastated by climate change—it would be national security negligence for the White House to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Over 1 billion people are expected to become climate refugees by 2050.

The less we burn, the more lives we save. It’s that simple. And the Paris Agreement is the international venue to do that—to address climate-security threats before they spiral out of control, to mitigate this clear and present danger to our planet.

Instead of withdrawing from this increasingly relevant global security agreement, then, the president’s agenda must include meaningful actions we can take to mitigate the effects and prevent more loss of life.

This is a “Day 1” in the White House-type priority, or at minimum something that needs tackling in the first hundred days, which is the same amount of time roughly 55,000 Americans will die prematurely because of air pollution in the United States.

We can save lives today by staying in this agreement and working with the world to do the same. Anything less means that President Trump is putting Americans in peril.

U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is chair emeritus of the House Natural Resources Committee. Michael Shank is an adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and visiting professor at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.