Syria signing up to climate accord leaves US out in cold

SYRIA has pledged to sign up to the Paris Agreement on climate change, leaving the US as the only country opposed to the 2015 accord.

The Damascus regime, which is in the midst of a sixyear civil war, yesterday became the final functioning state to commit to try to reduce global warming.

“I would like to affirm the Syrian Arab Republic’s commitment to the accord,” said Wadah Katmawi, the deputy environment minister, during climate talks in Bonn .

Until it signed up last month, Nicaragua was the only other country outside the 195-nation agreement, but that was because it felt the pact did not go far enough to cut carbon emissions.

The US, the world’s largest economy and second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, is the only government to have initiated withdrawal from the United Nations brokered pact which seeks to limit a global rise in temperatures to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial times, ideally 1.5C.

Donald Trump, who has expressed doubts that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are the prime cause of global warming, announced in June that he intended to pull out and instead promote US coal and oil industries.

“The US is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favourable to our country,” said a White House spokesman at the time.