Does Trump believe in climate change?
US President reluctant to say if he still considers it a hoax
WASHINGTON: With drawing the US from the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump sought to assure worried allies and the rest of the world that America remained committed to “robust efforts to protect the environment”, but he and his aides will not say if he still believes climate change is a hoax.
Trump’s personal view on the issue are under focus because he spoke about renegotiating the agreement or work on a “new transaction”, as he called it. But how does anyone negotiate climate change — if at all, because most world leaders have said Paris was irreversible — with a climate change denier?
In 2012, Trump — then only a businessman — tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He called global warming a “hoax” in a separate post two years later.
On Wednesday, as expectations mounted about Trump’s announcement the next day, the president was asked if he still believed climate change was a hoax. But Trump refused to say anything and walked away.
At the daily White House briefing on Friday, spokesman Sean Spicer and environment protection agency head Scott Pruitt refused to give a direct answer to questions about Trump’s personal view on climate change, despite being asked multiple times.
Pruitt spoke about how he and Trump were focussed in the last few days on a “singular issue — is Paris good or not for this country” but did not respond to the climate change question.
Spicer was equally evasive. When asked if he was able to check with the president — in an earlier briefing he had said he hadn’t had the chance to speak to Trump on climate change — he said, “I have not had an opportunity to have that discussion”.
Asked again, Spicer cited Pruitt to say “the president is focused on is making sure that we have clean water, clean air, and making sure that we have the best deal for the American workers”.
Trump and the White House’s reluctance to come out, one way or the other, is also a shift, as has been noted by some observers. He is not calling climate change or global warming a hoax or dismissing the underlying principle.