In response to the U.S. withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty, I’ve issued the following statement:

The Paris climate treaty is climatically insignificant. EPA’s own models show it would only lower global warming by an inconsequential two-tenths of a degree Celsius by 2100. The cost to the U.S. – in the form of required payments of $100 billion per year to the developing world – is too great for the inconsequential results. These very real expenses will consume money that could be used by the private sector to fund innovative new technologies that are economically sound and can power our society with little pollution. Because of our private investments in technological innovation, America leads the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. We did that without Paris, and we will continue our exemplary leadership without it.

While Paris will be with us for the near future as the process of withdrawing transpires, this is a step in the right direction. If you’d like to read more on the science behind Paris, take a look at this recent piece I wrote for The Hill, called “The Scientific Argument against the Paris Climate Agreement.”

(RELATED: 7 Reasons Trump is Right to Scrap the Paris Climate Deal)

Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for 30 years. Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

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