Existing climate efforts expected to keep U.S. goals on right track

SAN FRANCISCO — The momentum of climate change efforts and the affordability of cleaner fuels will keep the United States moving toward its goals of cutting emissions despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris global accord, business and government leaders in a growing alliance said Tuesday.

New York, California and 11 other states representing nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy, mayors of about 200 cities, and leaders of business giants including Amazon, Apple and Target have signed pledges to keep reducing their fossil-fuel emissions after President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord.

“Our coalition wants to let the world know that absent leadership from our federal government,” the country will keep cutting its emissions from fossil fuels, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told reporters Tuesday.

California, New York, Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Washington state, Vermont, Massachusetts, Delaware, Oregon and Washington, D.C., have signed pledges. The states, most led by Democrats, represent $7 trillion of the U.S. gross domestic product, or 38 percent.

Texas, the largest producer of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the U.S. and the biggest state economy after California, is a key figure absent from the list. More than two dozen other states, mostly in the country’s middle, already had been fighting stepped-up federal emissionscutting programs before Trump’s announcement.

Top Texas leaders have had little public comment on the withdrawal from the global accord, although the state’s attorney general praised the move.

New York and California are the only states in the country’s top 10 list of carbon emitters to sign pledges.