The big prize that his Goldman Sachs masters would really want is carbon credits and a carbon exchange that would fuel a new generation of Goldman growth and hegemony.
So staying in the Paris Accord and trashing coal could be seen as first steps toward that. After all, Goldman accelerated payments of $275M to Cohn to nudge him in to “public service”.
Your right it’s that carbon credit scam GS been pushing for decades that his real motive .
IMO your are correct. In a global carbon trading system, anyone that wanted to build something that uses fossil fuels would need to buy something somewhere else and shut it down.
Big banking houses and multinational oil companies would be among the few with enough financial muscle to pull this off on a global scale, and would essentially corner the market on the world’s cash register.
Wonder how may briefings Tillerson got on this when he was a Exxon.