Trump leaning to keeping U.S. in Paris climate accord,
At summit, Europe presses president to stick with accord.
President Donald Trump’s views on climate policy are “evolving” after European allies person- ally pressured him to reverse his vow to abandon an inter- national agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, a senior White House adviser said at the Group of Seven summit here on Friday.
Trump is considering remaining in the 2015 Paris environmental accord, a decision that would be a striking turnabout for a pres- ident who during his campaign pledged to scrap the agreement and has routinely labeled climate change a “hoax.”
“His views are evolving,” said National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who accompanied Trump at the G-7 summit. “He came here to learn. He came here to get smarter.”
Cohn said Trump feels “much more knowledgeable” on the topic and “learned how important it is for the United States to show leadership.” For instance, Cohn said, the European leaders impressed upon Trump that a global agreement, even if more than 100 nations sign on, has little power if it is not endorsed by the United States.
“The president, he digested that,” Cohn said. “That was a meaningful moment for him.”
The statement from Cohn, who has been privately counseling Trump to stay in the Paris accord, followed days of lobbying by foreign lead- ers during Trump’s first trip abroad, urging him not to abandon it.
The president of France tried to persuade him, as did the prime minister of Belgium and the heads of the European Union. Then there was Pope Francis, who gave Trump a copy of his encyc- lical on preserving the en- vironment and the “care of our common home.”
Trump has been waiting to make a final decision about whether to withdraw from the accord until after he returns home to Washington this weekend. Cohn said he will decide based on “what’s best for the United States,” and is also weighing domestic manufacturing and other economic concerns.
So far at this two-day gath- ering of the G-7 — a grouping of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — Trump and his counterparts discussed a broad range of issues, including terrorism and trade, as well as foreign policy hot spots such as Libya, Syria and North Korea.
The leaders agreed to a joint statement on combat- ing global terrorism, Cohn said.
Trump has made virtual- ly no public remarks about the G-7 other than a tweet on Friday: “Getting ready to engage G-7 leaders on many issues including econom- ic growth, terrorism, and security.”
Although most of his counterparts held news confer- ences here Friday, Trump did not, and he has yet to hold one during his marathon foreign trip — a break with tradition for presiden- tial travel overseas.
Some of Trump’s coun- terparts are prioritizing climate here, well aware that pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement has been the subject of consider- able debate within Trump’s administration, dividing the nationalists and globalists who battle to have the president’s ear.
Cohn said Trump did not want his G-7 partners to think he did not care about the environment, so the president told them, “The environment is very, very important to me, Donald Trump.”
Trump also told his counterparts that he has won environmental awards in the past, Cohn said. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has found no evidence of any such awards — aside from one issued by a golf association for his New Jersey golf course — and environmentalists have strongly criticized many of his real estate projects over the years.
It is unclear what Trump might decide about the Paris agreement, and White House officials have signaled that he might strike a compromise that involves lowering the U.S. emissions targets that some industries see as constraining growth while staying in the accord.
Under the agreement, which was reached by nearly 200 countries, the Obama administration pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 per- cent below 2005 levels by 2025, though it is not legally binding. Only two nations — Syria and Nicaragua — are not parties to the accord.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talked to report- ers earlier this week about “the difficulty of balancing addressing climate change, responses to climate change, and ensuring that you still have a thriving economy and you can still offer people jobs so they can feed their families and have a prosperous economy. And that’s a difficult balancing act.”