US President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, a White House official said yesterday, confirming a move certain to anger allies that spent years negotiating the landmark agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
However, there may be “caveats in the language” that Trump uses to announce the withdrawal, leaving open the possibility that the decision is not final, said the official, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the decision before the official announcement.
Trump tweeted yesterday morning: “I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Nearly 200 nations, including the US under the administration of former president Barack Obama, agreed in 2015 to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change.
Withdrawing would leave the US aligned only with Russia among the world’s industrialized economies in rejecting action to combat climate change.
During Trump’s overseas trip last week, European leaders pressed him to keep the US in the pact.
Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax,” promised during his presidential campaign to pull the US out of the deal.
Word of Trump’s decision came a day after the president met with US Environmental Protection Agency boss Scott Pruitt,
Like his boss, Pruitt has questioned the consensus of climate scientists that the Earth is warming and that human-made climate emissions are to blame.
Since taking office, Trump and Pruitt have moved to delay or roll back federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions while pledging to revive the long-struggling US coal mines.
What is not yet clear is whether Trump plans to initiate a formal withdrawal from the Paris accord, which under the terms of the agreement could take three years, or exit the underlying UN climate change treaty on which the accord was based.
The US is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon, after China.
However, Beijing has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting its targets under the Paris accord, recently canceling construction of about 100 coal-fired power plants and investing billions of US dollars in massive wind and solar projects.
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