Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The Trump Administration's misguided decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord places the United States alone and apart from the rest of the international community and the global consensus to take meaningful steps to address climate change.' Connecticut is profoundly disappointed that the United States federal government has abdicated its leadership role on climate change-the number one environmental issue of our time. We are also dumbfounded by the Trump Administration's hostility to any energy technology that is not fossil-fuel based-effectively ceding ground to the rest of the world on the development and deployment of clean energy. This is a strange place for the United States, which has historically led the world in basic science, technological innovation, and entrepreneurial activity.

The good news, however, is that leading states have joined together in the U.S. Climate Alliance to say to the Trump Administration that we are "still in" the Paris Climate Accord and we will meet our share of its obligations.2 The seventeen states3 in the U.S. Climate Alliance are a formidable coalition: we are bipartisan, we represent 40% of the U.S. population, and we account for more than $9 trillion in combined economic activity-enough to be the third largest economy in the world behind U.S. and China.' We also recognize that time is not on our side: we are already paying a price for inaction and are striving to make our states more resilient.

While Mr. Pace's paper looks to rest of the world for guidance on the challenges and opportunities for deployment of renewable energy and maintaining grid reliability, I would argue that we need not look so far afield. The U.S. Climate Alliance states are world leaders and innovators in the policies and technologies that will drive our clean energy future and we are all actively implementing programs that will continue to make measurable progress towards our global climate goals.

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