Trump ‘still thinking’ about climate deal, Tillerson says
ENERGY U.S. involvement in Paris accord unresolved
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump hasn’t decided if the U. S. will remain a part of the Paris climate accord, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, as pressure mounts from Pope Francis, European leaders and Democratic lawmakers at home to remain in the historic pact to address global warming.
Trump’s decision on Paris won’t be made until after he returns from his first foreign trip, Tillerson told reporters Wednesday on Air Force One on the way from Rome to Brussels.
“The president indicated we’re still thinking about that,” Tillerson said. “He hasn’t made a final decision.”
The delay has created an opening for foreign and religious leaders who are imploring Trump to honour the Paris commitment despite his criticisms of the deal as bad for American workers and his description of climate change as a hoax. That list includes the pope, who gave Trump a copy of his 2015 encyclical on climate change following a half-hour meeting in his private study Wednesday.
Bloomberg reported that Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, EU Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete and China’s special envoy for climate change Xie Zhenhua met Tuesday in Berlin to discuss climate leadership and how to maintain momentum if the U. S. pulls out of the Paris agreement.
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni raised the pact in his meeting with Trump, and newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron is also set to press the issue when he holds his first face- to- face meeting with the U. S. president. At home, Democrats say honouring the pact among about 200 nations is important for U.S. strategic interests.
“This is about U. S. leadership,” Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in Washington. “Our allies know how important U.S. leadership is for there to be acceptable world action.”
Trump is in Brussels Wednesday for a NATO meeting. He’ll be back in Italy again on Friday for talks with G-7 leaders in Taormina, Sicily. The world’s developed nations are hoping for a signal from Trump about the fate of the Paris pact during the G-7 summit, Germany’s environment minister, Barbara Hendricks, said Monday.
Supporters of the pact argue t hat a U. S. withdrawal could prompt other nations to f ol l ow s ui t , undermining the deal that is the cornerstone of worldwide efforts to address climate change.
Top Trump administration officials have clashed over whether t he U. S . should formally remain a party to the pact signed in December 2015, with environmental chief Scott Pruitt and top strategist Steve Bannon pushing for a pullout. White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, have advocated sticking with the deal.
Forty Senate Democrats sent a letter to the president insisting that a pullout would be devastating for the U. S. economy as well as the environment.
Leaving the deal would be “a historic misstep” that would “damage our standing on the world stage” and turn the U.S. into an “international pariah,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said at a news conference. A U. S. withdrawal would “cede economic and moral ground to China” to appease fossil fuel interests at the expense of middle-class, he said.
While running for president, Trump promised the U. S. would leave the accord, taking aim at the cornerstone of former president Barack Obama’s efforts to combat climate change. As recently as April, Trump criticized the agreement as a one- sided deal that disadvantages American workers — suggesting that if he decides to maintain U. S. involvement, he may try to renegotiate its terms.
Even without a formal decision, the Trump administration is rolling back a series of Obama- era climate policies and regulations viewed as critical for the U.S. to fulfil its Paris pledge to slash carbon dioxide emissions 26 to 28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2025.
WITHDRAWAL WOULD ‘CEDE ECONOMIC AND MORAL GROUND TO CHINA.’