The United States is to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, US president Donald Trump has announced, striking a major blow to international efforts to fight global warming.
Hailing the move as a “reassertion of America’s sovereignty”, the US president said the agreement signed by almost 200 countries in late 2015 “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other states”.
Italy, France and Germany responded on Thursday that they regretted the decision to withdraw and dismissed Mr Trump’s suggestion that the global pact could be revised.
“We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” the leaders of the three countries said in a rare joint statement.
In a speech on his decision that recalled the nationalistic rhetoric of his presidential campaign speeches, Mr Trump said his job was to represent the "citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris", claiming that the agreement signed by his predecessor Barack Obama would cost the US economy nearly $3 trillion over several decades and 2.7 million jobs.
Blistering sun
Speaking under the blistering mid-afternoon sun in the White House rose garden, the president said that the deal had been a “self-inflicted economic wound” that benefitted countries like China and India to the detriment of the US.
“At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?” he said. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore.”
Mr Trump said America would seek to re-enter the accord on terms that are “fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, it s taxpayers. We are getting out but we will start to negotiate and we can see if we can make a deal that is fair.”
He said: “As of today the United States will cease all implementation of the non binding climate accord.”
The terms of the agreement stipulate that a formal withdrawal cannot go into effect until November 2020 at the earliest.
As Mr Trump spoke, Mr Obama issued a statement criticising the move.
“Even in the absence of American leadership; even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got,” the former president said.
Landmark deal
Mr Trump is likely to face opposition domestically with the governor of California and the Mayor of Pittsburgh already signalling their intent to continue with their policies to combat climate change.
Internationally, there has been widespread condemnation. Former Irish president and UN high commissioner Mary Robinson said: “It is unconscionable that one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters would simply walk away from its responsibility to people both at home and abroad, in the interest of short- term fossil fuel profits.”
The landmark Paris Climate Agreement was signed in the French capital in late 2015, and 147 countries have now ratified the deal which seeks to reduce global warning by committing to keeping global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius and reviewing each country’s commitments every five years.
Mr Trump has already moved to dismantle his predecessor’s signature legislation on climate action, ordering the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revoke Mr Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and scrapping several measures designed to combat global warming. These included lifting a 14-month old moratorium allowing federal lands to be used for coal mining and reviewing oil, gas and fracking regulations.
Climate change ‘hoax’
Mr Trump has previously described climate change as a "hoax" while the EPA chief Scott Pruitt, a former attorney general of Oklahoma holds similar views. Shortly after her nomination in March he publicly queried whether human activity was a primary contributor to global warming.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he said.
