Paris Climate Agreement Withdrawal

The story took over Twitter through the afternoon of May 31, 2017. User @MissEllieMae's tweet arguing the pullout would be remembered as "the seismic event" of the era racked up more than 1,200 retweets and 2,900 likes in eight hours2. Twitter user @BraddJaffy quoted a New York Times line warning "it is now far more likely that we will breach the danger limit," pulling more than 580 retweets2. Radio host Hugh Hewitt cheered the move in the other direction, calling both the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal "vast overreachs of executive authority" that cut Congress out of major treaties2.

Elon Musk, who was then serving on a White House advisory council, tweeted that he had personally urged the president to stay in the deal and would resign from the councils if the U.S. pulled out. His tweet drew more than 4,800 retweets and 16,000 likes within about an hour2. Reddit lit up alongside: a /r/politics thread posted by Whoshabooboo about New York mayor Bill de Blasio pledging to uphold the agreement collected more than 32,900 points and 2,600 comments, while a supporting thread on /r/The_Donald crossed 9,000 points the same day2. Major outlets including The New York Times, CNN, and Politico published coverage that afternoon, and Twitter compiled the reaction into a dedicated Moments page4.