Trump: Rivals ‘eating our lunch’ amid climate debate

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real and that he is “studying” whether the United States should withdraw from the global warming agreement struck in Paris a year ago.

In an interview with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, Trump said he’s “very open-minded” on whether climate change is underway but has serious concerns about how President Barack Obama’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have undercut America’s global competitiveness.

“I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows,” Trump said. “Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast. I do know this: Other countries are eating our lunch.”

There is a scientific consensus that human activity — including the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, heating and industrial manufacturing — is driving recent climate change. In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is “extremely likely” that, since the 1950s, humans and their greenhouse gas emissions have been the “dominant cause” of the planet’s warming trend. The top 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998, and 2016 is expected to be the hottest since formal record-keeping began in 1880.

Yet during the presidential campaign, Trump referred to climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese, a comment he later described as a joke. But during a town hall in New Hampshire, Meghan Andrade, a volunteer for the League of Conservation Voters, asked Trump what he would do to address the issue, to which he replied: “Let me ask you this — take it easy, fellas — how many people here believe in global warming? Do you believe in global warming?”

After soliciting a show of hands, Trump concluded that “nobody” except for Andrade believed climate change was underway.

Trump told Wallace he needed to balance any environmental regulation against the fact that manufacturers and other businesses in China and elsewhere are able to operate without restrictions faced by their U.S. competitors.