George W. Bush’s Kyoto withdrawal cemented a perception of unilateralism that haunted his presidency. But President Trump has handled the issue differently, if just by chance.
WASHINGTON — The new president decided that the international climate change agreement negotiated by his predecessor was a job killer that sacrificed American sovereignty. So he pulled the United States out while much of the world jeered.
For President George W. Bush, the withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 proved to be a seminal moment, cementing a perception of unilateralism that alienated overseas allies and domestic critics. In the end, even his top advisers came to regret the move, not so much because of the merits of the decision, but because of the way it was handled.
Sixteen years later, another president has withdrawn from another climate change pact only to endure another chorus of catcalls from overseas. For President Trump, Mr. Bush’s experience offers cautionary lessons — some of which Mr. Trump and his staff seem to have internalized already, even though aides said they had not studied or thought much about the Kyoto precedent.
By coincidence, then, Mr. Trump, in moving away from the Paris accord, has taken steps to manage political fallout that Mr. Bush did not. Mr. Trump gave foreign allies, domestic advocates and his own advisers a chance to make their case directly to him before he made his decision. He announced the move openly, in front of the cameras, and explained his thinking. Immediately afterward, he called some of the more aggrieved foreign leaders to try to contain the damage. And he suggested that he was open to negotiating a new agreement.
“I’ m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under the terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers, ” Mr. Trump said in his speech announcing the decision on Thursday.
Mr. Bush did none of those things, and his advisers rued that he did not, concluding that he paid the price for the rest of his presidency. Whether any of that makes a difference for Mr. Trump remains to be seen. Even with a more elaborate, inclusive process and an expressed willingness to consider alternatives, he does not seem to be winning over many of his opponents.
That may be because they question his sincerity after his years of denouncing “ global warming hoaxsters .” Since Mr. Trump announced the pullout from Paris, his aides have largely ducked questions about whether he still considers climate change to be a hoax.
Pressed repeatedly on that question on “Fox News Sunday, ” Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said: “The president has indicated that the climate changes. It’s always changing. I’ ve indicated the same.” But he did not say whether Mr. Trump believed that human activity contributed to that, or whether it should be curbed as a result.
On CNN’s “State of the Union, ” another adviser, Nikki R. Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations, gave a fuller answer to the same question.
“President Trump believes the climate is changing, ” she said. “And he believes pollutants are part of that equation.” She added: “He knows that the U. S. has to be responsible with it, and that’s what we’ re going to do. Just because we got out of a club doesn’ t mean that we don’ t care about the environment.”
None of Mr. Trump’s other actions since taking office, including a move to cancel power plant regulations drafted by the Obama administration, suggest an interest in tackling climate change, even through different means, however. Advocates of the Paris accord who got a chance to make their case to the White House seemed no more assuaged: Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, promptly quit White House advisory councils after Mr. Trump’s decision.
Just as Mr. Trump came to office after President Barack Obama had sealed the Paris pact, Mr. Bush was inaugurated after President Bill Clinton had agreed to the climate change accord negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Unlike the Paris deal, which is a nonbinding agreement that did not require Senate ratification but included all but two of the world’s nations, the Kyoto accord was a full-fledged treaty that did not include big polluters in the developing world like China and India but imposed binding limits on the United States and Europe.
Mr. Bush had never supported the deal, calling it flawed because it did not include China and India, but as a candidate he had promised to impose a cap on carbon emissions. Less than two months into his presidency, in the midst of an energy crisis that produced rolling brownouts in California, Vice President Dick Cheney managed an end-around to reverse that pledge and formally abandon Kyoto.
Arguing that new restrictions would impose an undue burden on the energy industry, he drafted a letter to Congress renouncing both Kyoto and the carbon cap. Mr. Bush agreed to sign it without first consulting his secretary of state, national security adviser or E. P. A. administrator.
When Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, found out, she called Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state, at his office in Foggy Bottom. Alarmed, he told her, “Slow this thing down until I get there, ” and rushed downstairs to his car to race over to the White House.
By the time he made it the few blocks to the West Wing, it was too late. Mr. Cheney had left to hand-deliver the letter to Capitol Hill. “It’s gone, ” Ms. Rice told Mr. Powell.
Mr. Powell snapped at the president. “You’ re going to see the consequences of it, ” he said.
Mr. Bush’s rejection of Kyoto in some ways did not really alter American policy, since even Mr. Clinton had not submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification, mindful of a 95-to-0 vote in the Senate for a nonbinding resolution opposing an agreement like it.
But Mr. Bush had not prepared the allies for what was coming, feeding the impression of a go-it-alone attitude that would haunt him for years as he sought international help in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The way they did it was just flipping the bird to the rest of the world, ” Christine Todd Whitman, his E. P. A. administrator, later said.
Mr. Bush resisted the most expansive proposals to fight climate change for the rest of his presidency, and government scientists felt muzzled during his administration. But he invested tens of billions of dollars in developing alternative fuels and clean energy technology, and he convened summit meetings of leaders from major economic powers to collaborate on reducing emissions.
