Economic world tackles Trump's climate skepticism

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration's climate skepticism and its possible withdrawal from the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 drew a cloud over this week's grand economic conclave in Washington.

The regular meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — always accompanied by a gathering of G20 finance ministers — have rung out with calls to action against global warming in recent years.

But this week's lofty junket, which wraps up Saturday in the US capital, underscored the directional shift driven by Donald Trump's rise to the White House: climate is no longer a consensus matter.

The United States had already succeeded in having any mention of the climate removed from a concluding statement at a G20 finance ministers' meeting in BadenBaden, Germany, in mid-March.

And on Friday, the news conference following a meeting of the G20 finance ministers virtually ignored a subject that had been crucial to the administration of former president Barack Obama.

These days, the White House doubts the reality of climate change, and has so far not ruled out exiting the Paris Agreement, urgently negotiated in 2015 to reduce countries' greenhouse gas emissions.

The possibility that the United States — the world's largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter after China — could exit the agreement was front and center on Saturday as protesters took the streets in Washington.

Demonstrators gathered to denounce the Trump administration's pledged funding cuts for scientific research, no doubt causing some dyspepsia for the many ministers and other officials present at the IMF-World Bank spring meetings.

Segolene Royal, France's environment minister, put the odds of US withdrawal at 50 percent.

But former US Vice President Al Gore, who shared a Nobel Prize for his climate activism, was more optimistic, claiming there is an "excellent chance" the United States would remain a party to the agreement for one simple reason: the economy.