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U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could help galvanise greater global action and cement new alliances American President Donald Trump announced on June 1 that the U.S. would exit the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, stating he was putting America first. Remarkably for a country that has unambiguously contributed most to causing climate change, Mr. Trump’s speech was cloaked in victimhood. He argued that the agreement is unfair to his country because it hurts American jobs, is a disguised form of income redistribution, and impinges on the country’s sovereignty. What, practically, does the U.S. exit imply for the battle against climate change? How do we unpack and counter the world’s sole superpower’s scarcely believable claim to victimhood? And how might India most usefully engage, given our deep vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change? In practical terms, the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement is an enormous setback to effective climate action. A...

The U.S. strikes a blow to the climate pact, but the rest of the world must step up the efforts In abandoning the Paris Agreement on climate change, U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen to adopt a backward-looking course on one of the most important issues facing humanity. Ignoring scientific evidence on carbon emissions, Mr. Trump has carried his contempt for environmental regulations to an extreme with the decision to pull out of a hard-won compact that seeks to make the world safer for future generations. His move is incongruent with economic reality, because the most valuable American companies in manufacturing, computing, banking services and retailing, ranging from General Electric to Apple and Tesla, all see a future for growth and employment in green innovation, and not in fossil fuels. Some of them have begun reaping the benefits. For poorer residents of various countries, though, weakening of the climate agreement and failure to progressively reduce carbon emissions by 2...