ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 President Trump has signaled pretty heavily that he wants to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, and is widely expected to make it official Thursday afternoon. 
 
 Cue the impassioned indignation! 
 
 The leaders of all other G7 nations have urged Trump to remain in the accord, which seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions and has been signed by every nation on Earth except Nicaragua and Syria. Secretary of State (and former oilman) Rex Tillerson also wants the U.S. to stay committed to the agreement. Large corporations have opposed the move, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk even threatened to resign from Trump's CEO advisory council if Trump goes through with it. And of course, no debate about the environment would be complete without Hollywood's expert opinions. Mark Ruffalo tweeted that Trump would "have the death of whole nations on his hands" (whole nations! Not just parts of nations, whole nations!); Don Cheadle implored the president to change his mind because of the children (won't someone think of the children?!). Meanwhile Trump has reminded everyone that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement was a campaign promise of his, and has said that it hurts jobs in the Rust Belt, which is a core issue for his core constituency. 
 
 But really, all this outrage and controversy is absolute nonsense. 
 
 Ever since it was signed in 2015, the Paris Agreement has been a totem to which everyone genuflects. The problem, though, is that beyond allowing people an opportunity to do some serious virtue signaling, the Paris Agreement actually doesn't do much of anything. 
 
 This is not rhetorical exaggeration. As the Manhattan Institute's Oren Cass has pointed out, each nation's emissions reduction commitment is based on what is known as "Intended Nationally Determined Contribution" (INDC). In English? That means each nation under the agreement gets to decide how much it wants to reduce its emissions. 
 
 This might do some marginal good if you could at least compare emissions and maybe have transparency that would allow NGOs and others to name, shame, and nudge countries that do not reduce their emissions significantly, but developing countries vetoed a move that would have forced participants to set their targets under commonly shared metrics. A number of developing countries, chief among them China and India, have successfully lobbied so that "any obligatory review mechanism for increasing individual efforts of developing countries" was rejected from the Paris framework. 
 
 In other words, any country can state whatever metrics it wants. A country can submit a paper napkin that says "covfefe" as its emissions target, and then some years later, declare it has reached its emissions target. And that's pretty much what has happened. China's "target" for emissions "reductions" is actually less ambitious than the business-as-usual level, according to an analysis by Bloomberg; in other words, if China does nothing at all to reduce emissions, it will comfortably meet its target. But China at least forecasts some emissions reduction. India's target shows emissions never peaking or reducing. And yet it is still asking for $2.5 trillion in international aid to meet its "goal." 
 
 This might be why some estimates suggest that the "reductions" the Paris deal will "accomplish" show no improvement at all over the emissions baseline projected by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2000. 
 
 Whether you believe climate change is the most serious and pressing issue facing the world, or you believe it's a big hoax, it doesn't change the fact that the Paris deal is and always has been a bust. When Mark Ruffalo (or Angela Merkel, for that matter) warns of the dire consequences of leaving the Paris accord, they are blowing smoke. But that also applies to Trump when he claims that leaving the Paris accord will save jobs in the Rust Belt. 
 
 So, what will the consequences of leaving the Paris deal actually be? You can argue that by leaving, Trump would signal even more his intent to pull the U.S. out of multilateral frameworks, and that this would further damage relationships with allies. But you could also argue that the United States government lending its credibility to what is really an elaborate charade also damages its standing. It's all about how the accord is perceived, not what it actually does, which is zippo. 
 
 I think climate change is real and worrisome. But I also think it tends to be overblown as a threat, and I'm skeptical of centralized solutions. So this whole theater mostly makes me smirk. 
 
 Most of the noise about climate change, like the overpopulation movement before it, has very little to do with the actual substance of climate change, and a lot to do with signaling one's virtue. If that's the main thing the Paris deal is supposed to accomplish, then not only is it very successful, but it provides the best explanation for why this issue is generating such passion on both sides to begin with. The most vicious fights, after all, are often the ones where the stakes are the lowest. If the Paris deal actually did something, you might argue about its messy particulars, you might find that it has tradeoffs, and you might try to find compromises. 
 
 But if it's just a symbol, then all that's left to argue about is just how evil those people are who don't bow to the symbol. ||||| Drafted in December 2015, the Paris climate agreement’s main goal is to limit the average global temperature increase to below 2C (3.6F). If that threshold is exceeded, climate scientists believe subsequent severe weather events will be irreversible. 
 
 “We will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security,” Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, told the New York Times. 
 
 Signed by 195 nations and enacted last year, the accord works to avoid this disaster scenario by lowering planet-warming emissions. 
 
 Technically, the agreement is legally binding, in that it requires participating governments to accept and work toward the 2C threshold. But in reality, its powers of enforcement are weak: Emission targets themselves aren’t binding. For example, President Obama pledged to curb U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025. If that goal is not met, there won’t be any legal repercussions. 
 
 Obama has called the climate change accord the the “best chance we have to save the one planet we have.” In contrast, President Trump’s stance has fluctuated from hostility to ambivalence. During the campaign, he promised to pull out of the agreement — and despite a few signs he was wavering, it appears he will follow through on this. (Always the showman, Trump amped up the will-he-or-won’t-he reveal on Twitter.) 
 
 I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017 
 
 In theory, Trump can’t pull out of the accord for four years without breaking international law. But as Scientific American notes, there are a couple loopholes. Trump could exit the UNFCCC entirely, or send representatives to observe climate negotiations but not participate in them. 
 
 The U.S. produces the second-largest amount of greenhouse emissions in the world, behind only China. ||||| Add a location to your Tweets 
 
 When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Former President Obama blasted President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate deal, calling it an abdication of leadership, moments before his successor made it official. 
 
 Obama also argued the U.S. would be an economic loser because of Trump’s decision in a statement released as Trump told the world of his decision with remarks from the White House garden. 
 
 “The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” Obama said. “I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack.” 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 The Paris agreement negotiated and signed under the Obama administration was considered a hallmark of the former president’s efforts to combat climate change. 
 
 Trump’s decision to withdraw from it continues his efforts to erase much of the Obama legacy. 
 
 In this case, Obama said he hoped that states, cities and U.S. businesses would essentially block Trump’s actions by seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their own. 
 
 “But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got." 
 
 Syria and Nicaragua are the only two other countries that are not a part of the 195-nation deal. 
 
 In making his case for leaving the agreement, Trump argued it would help Rust Belt cities and deliver more jobs to the United States. He also said the deal negotiated by Obama treated the United States unfairly, and that it effectively transferred coal jobs to other nations. ||||| President Trump said on Thursday that the United States was officially withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, following through on a campaign promise and defying fellow world leaders who had pleaded with him to remain a party to the pact. 
 
 The move was sure to provoke a sharp backlash from the rest of the world, and it could prove to be a major setback for international efforts to avert drastic global warming. 
 
 The world’s nations had already been struggling to reduce emissions deeply enough to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, the threshold deemed unacceptably risky. The Paris climate deal was meant to provide a structure to ratchet up those efforts over time. Now, the world’s largest economy has clearly stated that it wants no part of that process. 
 
 The big question now is how other countries will respond to Mr. Trump’s withdrawal: Do they keep pressing ahead with climate action anyway, or does the accord start to unravel without the United States? Here’s a look at what happens next. ||||| International negotiations are more an art than a science. When the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015 by 195 countries, it felt as if the UN had finally mastered the art, some 25 years after it began working on it. 
 
 Now a climate-denying US president has threatened to derail progress and set the UN back by pulling out of the accord. 
 
 Though world leaders and global corporations urged Donald Trump to remain in the deal, there are quite a few people who indeed will be relieved to see the US leave. They argue the pact, and by extension the world, would be better off without US involvement in the accord. 
 
 To understand why, consider how the Paris agreement works. It lets each country decide its own target to reduce emissions, and assumes the target will be met voluntarily. If a country misses its goal, the only punishment is public shame. 
 
 Now put a bully in the ring—and a seemingly shameless one at that—and it’s easy to see how the deal can unravel. It’s clear from Trump’s first four months in power that there’s no way the US can deliver on its initial commitment to the Paris agreement, made during the Obama administration, to cut emissions by 2025 to about a third of what the US emitted back in 2005. When the country fails to make good on that promise and suffers no punishment, it would have weakened an already weak climate treaty. So its mere presence alongside nations following the agreement in good faith arguably would have threatened to undermine the pact’s objective. 
 
 “The Paris agreement is not intended as a fig leaf. It is not a branding opportunity, nor is it intended as a platform for lobbying. It is a club for countries who are part of a global effort to tackle dangerous climate change, and who are committed to emissions reductions. The US no longer meets these admission criteria,” writes Joseph Curtin, a member of the Irish government’s Climate Change Advisory Council and a research fellow at University College Cork. 
 
 Yes, the US emits about a sixth of all global emissions, and its per-capita emissions are among the highest in the world. Clearly it would be in the rest of the world’s interest to get the US to behave as a responsible neighbor on our pale blue dot. But at what cost? 
 
 The Paris agreement is set up such that each country has to renegotiate its goals to reduce emissions every five years. Luke Kemp, a lecturer in environmental policy and international relations at Australian National University, argues that the US, if it had remained a member of the agreement, would have likely played bully and impeded these negotiations. 
 
 “The US and the Trump administration can do more damage inside the agreement than outside it,” Kemp suggested in a recent piece for The Conversation. 
 
 Of course, no one likes a bully. So when they found one in Trump, the world’s other large emitters—the EU, China, and India—were compelled to reaffirm that they will respect their commitments to the Paris agreement. Beyond mere symbolism, these reminders counter the real risk of other members leaving because the US might. They also suggest there are other governments willing to take on the mantle of climate leadership. 
 
 When the US played bully 20 years ago in the negotiations of the Kyoto protocol (a Paris accord precursor, which the US never ratified), the EU took charge and strengthened the rules in the Marrakech accord of 2001, which brought together 164 countries to negotiate the fine print of the Kyoto agreement. 
 
 This time around, India and China could take on the role of lead enforcers, in part because these two countries are already ahead of their Paris commitments to cut emissions. That’s all the more reason why a US exit wouldn’t have the same death-knell effect that it seems to have had on another major international pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership; unlike the Paris agreement, the TPP trade deal lacked an obvious replacement to take on the leadership role vacated by the US. 
 
 Of the 195 countries that have signed onto the Paris climate agreement, some 147—representing more than 80% of global emissions—have already ratified or otherwise formally accepted it. Trump, who campaigned saying he would exit the deal, has promised to announce his final decision from the White House Rose Garden at 3pm local time on June 1. 
 
 With the US out, it’s down to 146 countries representing more than 65% of all emissions. That’s not ideal for the planet—but it is enough for the Paris agreement to survive. 
 
 This post was updated on June 1 at 3.45pm ET after Trump’s decision to withdraw.
– On Thursday, President Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, joining Nicaragua and Syria as the only countries not on board with the international accord. The New York Times looks at what happens next with the agreement and climate change. First, the formal withdrawal process takes four years, ending the day after the next presidential election, meaning a future president could rejoin. In the meantime, other countries could relax their own plans to curb emissions with the US out of the picture. But other experts predict a "galvanizing effect" among the remaining countries. Here's what else you need to know about Trump's decision: First, Fortune explains the Paris climate agreement. The gist is that countries agree to work toward keeping the global average temperature from rising 3.6 degrees over the pre-industrial average, at which point scientists believe the effects of climate change would be irreversible. In a statement, Al Gore called Trump's decision "reckless and indefensible." But he adds the transition to clean energy will be continued by mayors, governors, the business community, and the American people. Bill McKibben, writing for the New York Times, calls withdrawing from the agreement "our nation's dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq" and one that hurts not only civilization's ability to survive climate change but also civilization itself by undermining both diplomacy and science. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in the Week counters that outrage over the decision is "absolute nonsense" in that the agreement was weak and ineffectual, with countries left to set their own goals for reducing emissions. (Though he also says withdrawing from it won't do anything to add jobs in the Rust Belt.) President Obama says leaving the Paris climate agreement is a rejection of the future, leaving the countries that remain to "reap the benefits in jobs and industries created," the Hill reports. Elon Musk is leaving Trump's presidential advisory council over the decision, tweeting, "Climate change is real." Weather.com was also, clearly, not a fan of the decision. Below a livestream of Trump's press conference, it ran stories about "Antarctica turning green" and "California's coast disappearing into the sea" in an effort to get the American public to care about climate change. Finally, Quartz reports a US not fully committed to reducing emissions may have actually hurt the climate agreement more by staying in it. "It is a club for countries who are part of a global effort to tackle dangerous climate change ... The US no longer meets these admission criteria,” says a member of Ireland's Climate Change Advisory Council.