Michael Bloomberg pledges US$4.5m to Paris climate deal

WASHINGTON: Former New York City mayor and billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg promised US$ 4.5 million to fulfil the United States’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

“America made a commitment and as an American if the government’s not going to do it we all have responsibility,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.

Last June, US President Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the pact, championed by his predecessor Barack Obama. The president, whose Republican party has strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, said that the agreement was unfair to the world’s largest economy.

“I’m able to do it. So, yes, I’m going to send them a check for the monies that America had promised to the organisation as though they got it from the federal government,” Bloomberg said.

The landmark treaty was agreed by 197 nations in 2015 after intense negotiations in Paris, where all countries made voluntary carbon- cutting pledges running to 2030.

The pact saw countries agree to limit average global warming caused by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning to under two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

Days after the announcement the US was quitting the agreement, Bloomberg led nearly 1,000 business and government officials in declaring they would honor the accord.

The group, including the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google and known collectively as ‘ We Are Still In,’ branded Trump’s decision “a grave mistake that endangers the American public and hurts America’s economic security and diplomatic reputation”.

Bloomberg, who was mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013, also pledged to muster US$15 million for the UN climate body.