Or does he back down? It's clear he won't do anything to enforce the Paris accords anyway -- to all intents and purposes Obama's clean power plan expires at noon on 20 January, and Trump's guys will give the green light to any pipeline anyone proposes. But if he doesn't actually smash the global architecture of the Paris accords, he'll win points from responsible people. That's how that works.
It's entirely possible he'll decide to do neither, and send the Paris accords to the Senate for some kind of show vote, letting the entire Republican party take the heat for its climate-denying views. This would demonstrate weakness of a particularly childish sort -- the coat-holding boy who goads everyone else into a fight and steps back to watch.
The irony here is that the Paris accords aren't even very strong. They represent a lowest-common-denominator effort, one that will allow the world's temperature to keep climbing dangerously. They were passed in no small part to allow the world's leaders to strenuously pat themselves on the back for having done something. But at least the pact keeps the process moving -- and there are mechanisms that might allow the world to ratchet up its efforts as the temperature climbs. It's a tissue of compromise and gesture, a flimsy bulwark against the climbing mercury and rising sea. But wrecking it would be an act of political vandalism, one that would define Trump's legacy before he has even taken office.
So we'll see.
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