In the wake of President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, Dean Emeritus Richard Revesz, AnBryce Professor of Law, offered an unexpected perspective at the 2025 Hauser Global Law School Program Annual Dinner. “One thing that might not be obvious to people outside the United States is that entering or withdrawing from the Paris Agreement has absolutely no impact on US emissions or US emissions reductions,” he said in remarks to attendees. “For the US to actually do something, there has to be action from either Congress through legislation…or administrative agencies through regulation.”
In his talk at the March 20 event, “Climate Change and Presidential Transitions,” Revesz discussed the history of the United States’s participation in the Paris Agreement; how its involvement does, or does not, affect domestic environmental policy; and how other countries may react to future shifts in US participation in international climate change-related efforts. Environmental regulation and policy are specialties of Revesz, director and founder of the Institute for Policy Integrity, who also served as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2023 to 2025.
Revesz noted that, although the US has repeatedly joined and then dropped out of the Paris Agreement, there are several significant barriers to rapid changes in domestic environmental and energy policy. Inaction on the part of Congress, judicial review of repeal of regulations, legislation by individual states, and the global demand for clean energy sources and vehicles can all slow significant and rapid domestic deregulation.
“There is this question of how other countries will react to the US’s back-and-forth on the Paris Agreement and to what’s happening now on the ground as a result of this change of administrations,” said Revesz. Some theoretical models have suggested that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would lead other countries to defect, while other models predict that remaining countries would step up to fill the void—just as the European Union is now doing in the war in Ukraine, he said.
“As my talk suggests,” Revesz concluded, “despite all of the efforts of the Trump administration to undo every component of federal programs, the answer of what happens on the ground is not yet completely clear.”
Posted April 24, 2025.
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