Okay kids, you knew this was coming. Let’s talk about the Paris Climate Accords.

Is the agreement the end-all-be-all for international climate cooperation? No, and if we’re being honest, there are a lot of problems with it.

The agreement doesn’t hold high polluting nations accountable - in fact - under the agreement, Chinese emissions are permitted to rise 50% by 2030. China is already the highest emitting nation in the world. Not exactly the commitment to emissions reduction that we’d like to see.

Only 16 of 197 countries signed on to the agreement are on track to meet their goals. The agreement is nonbinding, and doesn’t require anyone to do anything. It’s a classic case of governments committing to feel-good ideas with very little follow through and no accountability.

This being said, there’s also a lot of misconceptions out there regarding what it actually does.

For example, Senator Ted Cruz’s claim that the agreement places the citizens of Paris over the citizens of Pittsburgh is just.. wildly off base. https://twitter.com/sentedcruz/status/1352040800646029312

For better or worse, the United States has reentered the agreement. That doesn’t inherently mean we will experience job loss here in the States. In fact, it could mean the opposite.

Climate change is a global issue, and thus requires global solutions. Those solutions don’t all have to look the same, but they do require international leadership and cooperation.

We could reduce our emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter. The truth is that our leadership is needed beyond our own borders.

Our absence in the Paris agreement only left a hole where we could have been leading by example.

By reducing our emissions domestically through innovative technologies, we combat climate change here at home and provide a roadmap to other nations on how they can do the same.

The US has an obligation to lead the world in not only producing low emission technologies, but exporting them to countries who do not have the means to innovate yet.

This is to our benefit - trade increases productivity, which increases our competitiveness, resulting in more manufacturing, higher GDP, and better employment.

The Paris agreement is deeply flawed, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have a role to play on the international stage. Rather than decrying the inevitable, let’s look forward to solutions that will benefit all Americans and the world around us.