Donald Trump Impeachment For Ditching Paris Climate Change Agreement: Law Professor
The latest justification from the left for a Donald Trump impeachment is his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Many liberals still maintain that the Russia narrative will culminate in Trump’s impeachment.
In fulfillment of a campaign promise, President Trump announced on June 1 that the U.S. would leave the Paris Climate Change Accord that was adopted in December 2015 and subsequently signed by Barack Obama. At the same time, he indicated a willingness to renegotiate a new deal that, in his view, is fairer to the American worker and the taxpayer.
Unlike a treaty that would have been binding if approved, Obama never submitted the Paris agreement to the U.S. Senate for a vote.
A total of 195 countries signed off on the Paris Accord, which calls for a voluntary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Trump’s decision prompted condemnation from politicians here and overseas and entertainment celebrities mostly on the liberal end of the ideological spectrum, many of whom cited various doom-and-gloom scenarios for the planet because of global warming.
Among a laundry list of objections to the agreement, Trump and his supporters noted that the Paris Accord allows industrial powerhouses China and India to continue to pollute for many years to come.
If fully invoked, the agreement would also function as an cash transfer of billions of dollars from the U.S. to developing nations through the Green Climate Fund.
“The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world,” the president declared in his speech about abandoning the agreement. As a technical legal matter, the official withdrawal takes effect as of November 4, 2020, the day after the next U.S. presidential election.
According to a retired law professor, however, backing out of the Paris Accord is grounds for impeachment and removal from office because it violated the public trust and constitutes a crime against humanity.
Writing in the Huffington Post, Thomas Jefferson School of Law emerita professor Marjorie Cohn seemed to argue, using different words, that it’s time to tell Trump “you’re fired.”
‘Trump’s withdrawal from the climate agreement constitutes an impeachable offense…By withdrawing from the climate agreement, Trump is violating the trust that ‘We the People’ have placed in him…Moreover, by withdrawing the United States from the climate accord, Trump has committed a crime against humanity, which also constitutes a High Crime…By withdrawing from the climate agreement and refusing to shoulder the United States’ share of responsibility for slowing climate change, Trump has intentionally committed an inhumane act that will ultimately cause great suffering to the people of the world…It is incumbent upon the House of Representatives to vote for the impeachment of Trump.”
The professor also claims that 22 GOP senators who formally asked Trump to pull out of the Paris agreement were his accomplices in the alleged crime against humanity.
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The essay also seemed to suggest that President Trump could be hauled into the International Criminal Court for what might amount to “destruction of the environment.”
As the Inquisitr reported in February, a high-level National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) whistleblower alleged that agency published a paper based on misleading and unverified data that exaggerated global warming and was meant to influence the delegates at the United Nations climate conference in Paris.
According to The Daily Caller, some of the rhetoric by global warming activists might be overheated, as it were, given the fine print of the deal.
“[Had] Trump…stayed in the Paris accord and implemented all the policies necessary to meet the Obama administration’s goal, it would have made no measurable difference to future global warming. The Obama administration’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 was only estimated to avert 0.03 degrees Celsius of projected global warming by 2100. And that’s assuming the climate models are right.”
Under Article II, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, a president can be removed from office via the impeachment process for treason, bribery, or other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Do you think that dropping out of the Paris accord is an impeachable offense that makes a Donald Trump impeachment likely?
[Featured Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]
