Nations around the world, rich and poor, are defiant.
UNITED NATIONS — Leaders from around the world maintained a defiant front Thursday after President Donald Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in English before switching to French, said he believed Trump was making a mistake, then extended an offer to Americans: “Tonight, I wish to tell the United States: France believes in you, the world believes in you. I know that you are a great nation. I know your history, our common history. To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the president of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second home.
Union ‘galvanized’
Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union’s commissioner for climate, said Trump’s decision had “galvanized us” and promised that “this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership.”
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy issued a statement expressing “regret” and rejected Trump’s assertion that he would renegotiate the deal.
“We therefore reaffirm our strongest commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement, including its climate finance goals, and we encourage all our partners to speed up their action to combat climate change,” the statement read.
Christina Figueres, the former U.N. official who led the negotiations, said that under the agreement the United States cannot even submit its intention to withdraw until November 2019, after which the process would take a year.
“You cannot renegotiate individually,” she said. “It’s a multilateral agreement. No one country can unilaterally change the conditions.”
In his comments Thursday, Trump took aim at the Green Climate Fund designed to help poor nations deal with the havoc of climate change, calling it a vast scheme to redistribute wealth. Figueres described the fund as a “political message” of help from rich countries to poor countries that have done little to wreck the atmosphere.
Mayors from Sweden to Australia pushed back against the announcement. “What’s heartbreaking is the damage governments can do in a short time when they’re in power,” said Clover Moore, the mayor of Sydney. “But where national action falters, as we see in the USA tonight, we see more and more city governments stepping up to provide the leadership we urgently need.”
Mary Robinson, a former U.N. special envoy for climate change, said in a biting statement: “The U.S. reneging on its commitment to the Paris Agreement renders it a rogue state on the international stage.”
New alliances
Before the announcement, U.N. envoys from rich and poor countries alike said they were sticking to the agreement, with or without the United States. New diplomatic alliances were forming, with Europe, India and China pledging to uphold their end of the deal.
Premier Li Keqiang of China, in Berlin for meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Thursday before Trump’s decision that his country remained committed to the fight against climate change.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, stands to gain international credit for standing by the Paris Agreement, but it would not be able to fill the void on its own if the United States abandoned the treaty.
“China will continue to uphold its commitments to the Paris climate agreement,” Li said, confirming a position his country agreed to alongside the United States in 2014.
Several Western diplomats said they could not fathom why the White House would join the tiny clique of nations that had not signed the accord. The last time the United States’ standing had fallen so low was during its invasion of Iraq, several said.
“Humanity is at a fork in the road,” said Kai Sauer, the ambassador from Finland. “One hundred and ninety countries going on one path, and the United States, Syria, Nicaragua going on another? It seems a bit strange. This definitely also changes how we are looking at the United States.”