As Trump steps backward on climate, Panetta looks forward.

Syria and Nicaragua.

These are the two countries the United States joined today when President Donald Trump announced at the White House that America would be exiting the Paris Agreement, a global, non-binding climate agreement signed by more than 190 countries in 2015.

To date, it represents the most meaningful attempt to address climate change in history, and notably, of the two countries that didn’t sign it in 2015, one was at war (Syria), and the other refused to enter because the agreement wasn’t aggressive enough (Nicaragua).

Walking out into the White House’s Rose Garden, 30 minutes late, Trump—unlike in many of his speeches—largely stuck to script, and could be seen reading off the podium. He talked about how much he loves the coal industry, how the agreement is bad for American jobs (an assertion not supported by facts) and how it redistributes American wealth to the rest of the world (also not supported by facts).

He decried how in America—the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, and historically the largest—it’s hard to build a coal-burning plant, but that China can build hundreds. He said he wanted to potentially re-enter the agreement after renegotiating America’s terms in it, “to see if we can make a deal that’s fair."

"If we can, that’s great, if we can’t, that’s fine," Trump said.

"We don’t want other countries, and other world leaders laughing at us anymore,” he went on to say. “And they won’t be, they won’t be."

And while past presidents have strived to be viewed as the leaders of the free world, Trump took another angle:

"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," he said.

After the speech, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto tweeted:

In an ironic coincidence, U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, was at a roundtable about sea level rise in Moss Landing this afternoon with UC Santa Cruz environmental scientist Gary Griggs and former California Coastal Commission executive director Charles Lester, among others.

Panetta sees Trump's move as purely political, since Trump has backed off the campaign promises to pull out of NAFTA, NATO and talking tough to China.  

"It’s a fulfillment of a major campaign promise of his, in an area he thought he could do it," Panetta says, who laments that by pulling out of the agreement, we are "turning our back on our children."

And after spending the afternoon talking about sea level rise, that subject in particular is clearly is on his mind.  

"The warming of our atmosphere is a proven issue, and it’s definitely contributing to a potentially dramatic rise in sea levels," he says, "and that affects not only the shores of our nation, but also the Central Coast, be it hospitality, or the ag industry with the rise of [seawater] intrusion into our aquifers."

Panetta is nonetheless hopeful that California, and the local region, can continue to show leadership.

"It’s going to be bottom up, and not top down,” he says. "It’s important for people to have the energy to continue to fight for what’s right—not just for the state, but for our future."