An American not in Paris
By Bruce Pardy for “Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs The Net Zero Myth,” (Chapter 24), produced by Canary House Publishing, now available on Amazon in paperback, hardback, e-book and audio.
An American Not in Paris: In Praise of Trump’s Withdrawal
In his critique of the Paris Climate Agreement (often just called “Paris”), law professor Bruce Pardy frames the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement not as climate denial but as the rejection of a “progressive fairy tale.”
The U.S. withdrawal from Paris under Trump, its re-entry under Biden, and its re-withdrawal under Trump illustrate the point: Paris is a totem of ideological commitment, argues Pardy, not a serious emissions regime. Actual concentrations care nothing for who signs what.
Portraying the world as one big community that must unite, make shared sacrifices, prioritize the “common good,” reduce inequality, and override market forces (profit, competition, private property), Paris and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are not environmental instruments; they are vehicles for social justice, anti-Western blame, and sovereignty erosion rather than a neutral environmental tool.
By embedding “common but differentiated responsibilities” — Pardy describes how Paris rejects formal equality among nations and imposes uneven burdens. Developed countries, he notes, must slash emissions, transfer wealth, and accept escalating supervision, while developing nations, including the world’s largest emitters (especially China), enjoy softer expectations and financial inflows.
Stressing that a genuine climate pact would reject differentiation, Pardy looks at how such an agreement might work:
It would demand common responsibilities and net-zero targets applied uniformly. It would enforce Stockholm Principle 21 through trade-linked sanctions, not voluntary pledges. Uniform carbon pricing (replacing distortive income taxes) could internalize costs without industrial self-harm. National sovereignty would remain intact, with realistic international law rather than open-ended global governance.
Paris does none of this.
Instead, concludes Pardy, it functions as a Trojan horse for Marxist-style transformation — a “revolution” by climate emergency to redistribute wealth and move the global community to the “next stage of human society” beyond capitalism.
Read the full text of Bruce Pardy’s “An American Not in Paris” here.
