Donald Trump pulls US out of Paris climate deal, blames India & China for polluting world
US President Donald Trump on Friday declared that the US will withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord, saying the “draconian” deal unfairly punished America but benefited countries like India and China, drawing strong condemnation from across the world.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump said, immediately triggering global condemnation on the move by the world’s second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses.
“As president, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world,” he said from the Rose Garden at the White House.
“It is time to exit the Paris Accord and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country,” Trump said while announcing the sweeping step that fulfills a campaign promise while acutely dampening global efforts to curb global warming.
“We’re getting out,” he said. “And we will start to renegotiate and we’ll see if there's a better deal. If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine."
The Paris agreement commits the US and other countries to keeping rising global temperatures “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels and “endeavour to limit” them even more, to 1.5°C. Only Syria and Nicaragua did not sign up to the deal.
Trump said he made the decision as the Paris deal was unfair to the US and badly hit businesses and jobs.
He said India would get billions of dollars for meeting its commitment under the Paris agreement and it — along with China — would double its coalfired power plants in the years to come, gaining a financial advantage over the US.
In its reaction, India said it was committed to the Paris agreement “irrespective” of the stand taken by any other country. “Our government is committed irrespective of the stand of anyone, anywhere in the world. It has been the stand of PM Narendra Modi,” environmet minister Harsh Vardhan said, stressing that Modi had provided “leadership” at Paris summit.
Expressing deep concern over his successor's decision to pull out of the Paris climate pact, former US president Barack Obama has said that by doing so, the Trump Administration has joined a small handful of nations that reject the future.
"The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack," Obama said in a statement here.
"But 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,” he said.
"A year and a half ago, the world came together in Paris around the first-ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the world we leave to our children," said the former US president.
He said it was steady, principled American leadership on the world stage that made that achievement possible. It was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set their sights higher as well, he said.
"And what made that leadership and ambition possible was America's private innovation and public investment in growing industries like wind and solar – industries that created some of the fastest new streams of good-paying jobs in recent years, and contributed to the longest streak of job creation in our history," Obama said.
"Simply put, the private sector already chose a lowcarbon future. And for the nations that committed themselves to that future, the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for businesses, scientists, and engineers to unleash high-tech, lowcarbon investment and innovation on an unprecedented scale," Obama said in his statement in which he did not directly name the US president.
Jen Psaki, the former White House Communication Director said the announcement is devastating.
"For the eight years I worked at the White House and the State Department under president Obama, we had a simple rule: When we made a promise as a nation – one that nearly every other government in the world stood behind, one that was popular with both businesses and citizens, and one that safeguarded a prosperous future for our children – we kept it," Psaki said.