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Among the many reasons to celebrate the resurgence of the Anglo-American left, the battle to stall climate change surely approaches the top of the list. Even a passing understanding of contemporary science reminds us that we live in an age that demands radicalism. Transforming the globe’s energy system within the time available is challenging enough, but we must do so in opposition to some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporate and political interests in history. Climate change is the first test of whether democracy can constrain capitalism in the name of justice, and the question of whether history will continue as anything but barbarism hangs on the outcome. Stopping climate change requires both state power and international cooperation. Regarding the former, the contemporary left seems broadly in agreement: Christian Parenti persuasively argues in Dissent that “it is this society and these institutions that must cut emissions.” Likewise, Alyssa Battistoni opens Jacobin’s recent climate-focused issue by explicitly rejecting the idea that we should wait for the revolution to deal with climate change. Instead, the Left should secure “more democratic political control over industry, technology, and infrastructure; more conscious intention about how we build our world, why, and for whom.” On international solidarity, too, the Left is not found wanting, reliably and correctly arguing, as Battistoni does, that “those who have the least to lose from global warming are leading us down a road to disaster that will hit black and brown, poor and working-class people first and hardest” — a statement that is true both within countries and between them. Yet this internationalist commitment is rarely matched with an equivalent enthusiasm for the actually existing mechanism for interstate cooperation: the Paris Climate Agreement (PA). On the contrary, the Left holds a uniformly negative view of the agreement, in arguments that range from trenchant critique to outright hostility. The Left tends to present the PA as irredeemably weak, completely inadequate to the task for which it has been created. But, like any text, the PA is open to interpretation, and the interpretations that emerge in the first few years of its existence can quickly become canonical. Rather than insisting that the PA does nothing, we should advance a radical interpretation and do it immediately. As with so much in this struggle, delay invites disaster.

What Paris Imposes The responses to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the agreement exemplify the bad, but increasingly accepted, interpretation. For example, Chris Hayes — the normally reliable author of this very good article about climate change — epitomized this response, in all caps no less: Many have repeated the claim that the Paris Agreement “literally imposes nothing,” that it is “nonbinding.” But, at best, this oversimplifies the deal. The PA requires each signatory nation to set a target and pursue domestic measures “with the aim of achieving” it (Article 4.2). The only thing the agreement does not impose is a binding obligation to meet that target. Further, Article 13 requires every country to submit the information necessary to determine whether it is, in fact, taking the steps required to hit its target. The agreement also establishes a committee dedicated to “promoting compliance” with the terms. It is possible, I suppose, to recognize the distinction between a binding obligation to meet a particular outcome (which the agreement does not impose) and a binding obligation to act toward that outcome (which it does) and still conclude that the PA “imposes nothing” on the 172 countries that have ratified it. But doing so substantially misinterprets the agreement in the service of weakening it. The “voluntary” criticism often appears with this “nonbinding” argument. The PA does allow each country to set its own target, and, in aggregate, those targets are inadequate. Setting aside the lazy and undemocratic nature of this critique — if your country’s target is weak that’s on you, citizen — and setting aside the practical impossibility of the alternative — 197 countries each setting targets for 196 other countries — such a preemptive dismissal of the agreement doesn’t tell the whole story. While the PA may not dictate specific targets, it does require countries to set and revise their goals every five years, as part of a cycle that includes a global stocktaking in order to illustrate how inadequate those targets are. (If five years seems like a long time, consider that the first evaluation will begin next month.) Most importantly, while targets are nationally determined, the agreement makes it clear that no country may reduce a target once it has been set. Parties must “maintain” the target they have set (Article 4.2) and submit a new one every five years (Article 4.9). Each new target must reflect both a “progression” from the existing one and the country’s “highest possible ambition” in light of its national capacity (Article 4.3). Countries may revise their target at any time “with a view to enhancing [the target’s] level of ambition” (Article 4.11). No country can go backward: the world cannot afford it, and the PA doesn’t allow it. Unfortunately, a recent, spectacular failure of nerve has endangered this integral principle of the deal. Earlier this year, as speculation swirled around Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the PA, someone in his administration saw an opportunity to kneecap the deal even before the country pulled out. On May 2, the New York Times reported that debate over American withdrawal had focused on Article 4.11 and the question of whether it bound the current administration to honor the nation’s 2015 target. The Times credits Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt with arguing that “the language of the provision does not allow nations to weaken their commitments” and therefore withdrawal was the only appropriate way forward. Others within the administration, including Rex Tillerson and Ivanka Trump, were reportedly in favor of ignoring Article 4.11, submitting a weaker target, and staying in the agreement. From an administration that has proved blessedly incompetent in many other fields, the “debate” over Article 4.11 was a phenomenally successful gambit. Pruitt (it was surely Pruitt — I doubt Bannon has ever so much as opened the Paris Agreement) wagered that if he made it known that Article 4.11 was a problem, some would be willing to gut one of the agreement’s core principles in the hopes of keeping the United States from leaving. And so they did. Todd Stern, President Obama’s lead negotiator in Paris, spearheaded that effort. On May 8, less than a week after the Times report, Stern implored Trump not to leave the agreement, stating that, “as much as I would be sorry to see any retrenchment — countries can adjust their emissions targets downward. The agreement permits it, and I know because I helped negotiate that flexibility.” Stern’s statement is breathtaking in several respects, not least the audacious claim that helping negotiate an agreement establishes you as its sole authoritative interpreter. It’s also misleading: formulations of Article 4.11 allowing downward “flexibility” were considered and rejected over the course of the negotiations, and changes in domestic politics were never proposed as a justification for reducing a target. Stern himself confirmed to the LA Times in 2014 that “countries would have to agree to no backsliding: Emissions targets set every five or ten years would have to be increasingly more ambitious.” But most important, Stern’s public statement, published before Trump had announced his decision, represented a major strategic miscalculation. Three weeks after prompting President Obama’s lead climate negotiator to undermine the agreement’s integrity in the pages of the Washington Post, Scott Pruitt sat in the Rose Garden and watched the President declare that the United States would leave the deal anyway. Stern got played, but it’s hard to blame him too much. Someone in his position will always prefer compromise in the name of continuity between administrations. And others seem willing to let the United States rewrite the rules. Despite Europe’s ambitious targets — ambitious in the sense of what is achievable in terms of current energy policy, rather than what the science requires — the European Union’s Commissioner for Climate and Energy, Miguel Aenes Cañete, has indicated he is open to the Trump administration “chart[ing] its own path” to keep the United States in the agreement. But the Paris Agreement doesn’t allow for any nation to play fast and loose with its provisions. Article 4.11 uses conditional terms: countries “may” adjust their targets, which some have suggested makes it not “legally binding” — a diplomatic way of saying that the United States can ignore it. This argument ignores the fact that Article 4.11 was written only to allow countries to adjust their targets up and that 4.11 must be read with Article 4.2’s requirement that countries “maintain” the targets they set. Allowing the Trump administration to submit a weaker target would thus be a breach of both Article 4.11 and Article 4.2, wrecking the careful compromise between national sovereignty and scientific necessity established in the agreement. Unsurprisingly, the developing world has met the prospect of a downward US revision — and the precedent it would set — with undisguised fury. While Stern seems at least partially motivated by faith in a Trump climate pivot that will never come, another line of thinking is clearly at work. By the PA’s terms, Trump cannot begin the process of withdrawal until the end of 2019 and cannot complete it until November 4, 2020. In other words, if a Democratic candidate who supports the Paris Agreement defeats Trump in 2020, the United States would be formally absent from the agreement for only a matter of months. Why, then, are both Stern and Cañete willing to compromise? The concession makes no sense if you think Trump will be a one-term president. Clearly, Stern and Cañete aren’t so confident.