Sims Gallagher quoted on Republican vow to torpedo Obama's Paris climate agenda
I asked Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy at Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, what a Republican president — one who opposes action on climate change — could mean for any progress reached in Paris this week.
“It does jeopardize the international momentum that we have. If the United States fails to meet its targets, it will lose the moral authority to encourage and cajole other countries to honor their commitments as well,” says Gallagher, who also served in the Obama Administration as a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Gallagher says international law is soft and it's difficult to enforce commitments — the best path forward is to lead is by example. She adds that if the Republicans don’t like the president’s approach to curbing greenhouse gases, it would be helpful for them to devise some of their own.