This was a gutsy and correct call by President Trump. It would have been better in my view to submit the treaty for rejection but the Senate, but this is the second-best option. It reminds me a little of George W. Bush pulling out of the ABM Treaty, which wasn’t easy because of the inertia and pieties that build up around these treaties, no matter how worthless they are. Some liberals are objecting to Trump’s action this afternoon on grounds that the treaty is voluntary. But this is disingenuous — they clearly want to make the treaty more binding and restrictive over time. The treaty is a proxy for a big policy disagreement over whether it make sense to restrict energy use — and harm the economy — today to shave a little off the global temperature 80 years from now (if the assumptions of the alarmists are correct), or whether we should grow as much as possible right now and worry about adapting and using technology to combat climate change if we indeed face a serious problem in 2100.

Meanwhile, the liberal freakout is truly something to behold (remember, these are people who pride themselves on their dispassionate commitment to facts and science):