Some companies and states are working to uphold the Paris climate accord, from which President Trump announced a U.S. departure last week. But, as is often the case, conservative state legislatures can easily undo measures taken at the city and county level, says Megan Mullin, a professor of environmental politics and policy. “Depending on the type of activity, a conservative state that is hostile to the idea of climate change action could clamp down on a city’s flexibility to engage in these activities,” says Mullin.
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The Paris Agreement, Climate Change, NC Coast
“President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement may have serious consequences for North Carolina and our precious coast. In his withdrawal speech, he made no reference to the fact that the Paris Agreement is the first global step in the direction of slowing down the sea-level rise,” writes
Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus at the Nicholas School of the Environment.
Trump’s Decision on Paris Climate Change Agreement
Energy expert Brian Murray joins a panel to discuss the president’s decision to pull the United States out of the agreement. Murray says the move means the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is stepping away from the international process to address emissions over the next several decades, and that the responsibility will now fall on other nations. (starts at 8:25 mark)
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Reactions To Trump’s Climate Accord Decision
“The notion that this change in policy will somehow resurrect the coal mine sector is a little bit hard to fathom,” says Brian Murray, interim director of Duke’s Energy Initiative. “Coal mining is subject to market forces that reduced employment significantly over the last several decades.”
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Could ISIS Have Been Averted? US Not to Blame
“The United States is not to blame for the rise of the Islamic State. Nor is the United States all-powerful, capable of preventing any evil in the world. Far from it. But different U.S. policies might have better positioned it in the fight against the Islamic State,” writes political scientist Peter Feaver.
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Takeaways From A Possible US Exit Of Paris Climate Accord
Being a part of Paris Accord discussions is so important that it’s spurred many companies across a broad array of U.S. sectors to advocate for staying in the agreement, says Brian Murray, director of the Environmental Economics Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. “You want the U.S. at the negotiating table,” Murray says. “These are companies that operate in most of those countries anyway, so they’re going to be living with the Paris agreement with or without the United States in it.”
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Five Reasons Why the US-Vietnam Relationship Matters
“The White House visit by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc on May 31 will be the first by a leader of a Southeast Asian nation since Trump’s inauguration. It signals awareness of the tremendous opportunity to build on the foundations laid by Presidents Bush and Obama to establish a strong framework for cooperative development and peaceful engagement,” write political scientist Edmund Malesky and Renate Kwon, program manager of the Southeast Asia Research Group.
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Growing Military Clout Could Shift Foreign Policy
Generals dominate just about every big national security decision President Trump makes. Chastened by the losses in Iraq, will military officers take a more cautious view? “The conventional wisdom on this is probably wrong,” says political scientist Peter Feaver, a national security adviser in George W. Bush’s White House. “Empirically, the military is more reluctant to use force . . . but if force is used, then they want it to be used without restraint.”
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Policymakers Must Prepare For New ISIS Threats In The Future
“It is imperative that the United States and local allies learn how to respond to ISIS’ presence in the physical and cyber domains now. If we cannot learn to outpace ISIS, we will not be ready for the group that surpasses it,” writes Andrew Byers, a visiting assistant professor of history who has served as an intelligence and counterterrorism analyst.
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Why President Trump is Disregarding ‘Constitutional Norms’
Law professor Neil Siegel says the most troubling aspect of Donald Trump’s conduct during and since the 2016 presidential campaign is not any potential violations of the U.S. Constitution or federal law, but his disregard of norms that had previously constrained presidential candidates and his flouting of constitutional conventions that had previously guided occupants of the White House.
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Trump Call On Afghan Surge: Another Step Away From ‘America First?’
Trump is “having trouble sticking to the ‘America First’ approach to foreign policy that he advocated in the campaign, and there’s a reason for that,” says public policy professor Bruce Jentleson, a former State Department policy planning official. “He’s finding out that ‘America First’ is hard to do in a way that doesn’t leave you shooting yourself in the foot.”
Read More in The Christian Science Monitor
Reports Of Trump Sharing Classified Info Point To Growing Fear Of Him
“They’re truly frightened about him,” public policy professor Bruce Jentleson says of U.S. intelligence officials. Jentleson, who served as a foreign policy aide in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, notes that an inadvertent disclosure of classified information to Russian officials would demonstrate “incompetence, impetuousness” and “mania,” adding: “I’m scared, too.”
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