The European Union moved this week to follow the United States and more than 60 other countries in formally signing onto the Paris climate accord, setting the world on course for the epic clean energy shift we need to fight the central environmental challenge of our time.

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With the agreement set to take effect early next month, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBubba Wallace to be driver of Michael Jordan, Denny Hamlin NASCAR team Graham: GOP will confirm Trump's Supreme Court nominee before the election Southwest Airlines, unions call for six-month extension of government aid MORE has vowed to “cancel” it if he’s elected president. That fits his pattern of reckless threats to walk away from U.S. commitments worldwide but it’s not in our national interest any more than his loose talk about breaking U.S. promises to defend our NATO allies or make good on the national debt.

Turning our back on the United Nations agreement inked last December in Paris would put official U.S. policy at odds with basic science, world opinion and the more than 6 in 10 Americans who expect real climate action from our government.

It would hurt our coastal communities, heartland ranches, wildlife, waters and farms. And it would set us back a generation in a fight for our future we can’t afford to lose.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonJoe Biden looks to expand election battleground into Trump country Biden leads Trump by 12 points among Catholic voters: poll The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden goes on offense MORE understands the stakes for the country. She’s laid out sound proposals to advance climate progress and create clean energy jobs.

Trump has no plan to fight climate change or seize the promise of a clean energy future. He wants, instead, to roll back the gains we’ve made. He can’t decide, for that matter, whether climate change is a hoax or a political punch line:

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

It’s neither. Climate change is a threat to the natural systems that support all life. It touches, or will touch, every facet of our world. We need to act against it — and now.

We just finished the hottest summer since global record-keeping began in 1880. The hottest year on record was 2015; this year has been even hotter. And 15 of the hottest years ever recorded have all occurred in this century.

By burning vast amounts of coal, oil and gas, we’re choking the Earth’s atmosphere with industrial levels of climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, up 25 percent since just 1960.

A global mess needs a global fix. That’s what the Paris agreement is all about.

It sends an important message to a united world: we’re not stuck with dirty fossil fuels that do more harm than good — and we won’t abandon our children to pick up the tab for bad habits that put them at risk.

Trump would toss all that aside and lock our kids and grandkids into more and more fossil fuel hazard and harm.

U.S. leadership was key to securing the climate pact. We’re cutting our carbon footprint at home, because that’s what’s best for our people, and our friends around the world are watching.

That’s why President Obama was able to lead his counterparts from China, India and more than 180 other countries to put pledges on the table in Paris to cut fossil fuel use in favor of cleaner, smarter ways to power our future.

China is the world’s biggest carbon polluter. It’s also the largest investor in clean energy, with a third of global spending on wind and solar power last year. Through the Paris accord, China has pledged to cap the growth of its carbon emissions by 2030 and begin scaling down from there.

We’re already seeing signs of real progress: China’s coal consumption fell the past two years in a row.

Gathering China with the rest of the world around common pledges to accelerate the shift to clean energy is a win for the United States. It exemplifies exactly the kind of global cooperation U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have sought since the end of World War II.

It’s in our interest to work with other nations, not mindlessly shatter hard-won global consensus in favor of some rudderless Lord of the Flies approach where it’s every country for itself.

The Paris agreement aims to hold global temperature rise below the 2 degrees Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) that would trigger the worst effects of rising seas, expanding deserts, raging floods, wildfires and storms — more, in other words, of exactly the kind of climate chaos we’ve begun to see worldwide.

The agreement has teeth, requiring countries to share information about their carbon pollution and what they’re doing to cut it. And the accord supports the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

Coal, oil and gas make up 80 percent of world energy use. That needs to change — on our watch.

Over the next two decades, investors will pump some $50 trillion into energy systems worldwide. The Paris agreement provides a framework that helps target that investment so we improve energy efficiency worldwide, speed the production of all-electric and hybrid cars and get more clean power from the wind and sun.

We’re on our way. More than $300 billion of global investment last year went to clean energy. It’s creating entire new industries and generating millions of good-paying jobs — 2.5 million in this country alone.

The Paris accord provides the global framework we need to fight climate change and create the low-carbon global economy of tomorrow. That’s progress for us to build on — not cancel.

Rhea Suh is president of the NRDC Action Fund, an environmental advocacy group.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.