The Asian Age

US set to join landmark Paris climate agreement?

◗ In June, Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Paris accord and decided to renegotiat­e the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries

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Washington, Jan. 11: President Donald Trump on Thursday said the US could “conceivabl­y” return to the landmark Paris climate agreement but did not indicate any move in that direction.

In June, Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and decided to renegotiat­e the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries during the previous Obama administra­tion.

Defending his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Mr Trump said his primary concern with the Paris climate accord was that it treated the US unfairly and that if a better deal could be reached, Washington might be persuaded to rejoin.

“The Paris Agreement as drawn and as we signed was very unfair to the United States. It put great penalties on us. It made it very difficult for us to deal in terms of business. It took away a lot of our asset values,” Mr Trump said.

“Frankly, it’s an agreement that I have no problem with, but I had a problem with the agreement that they signed, because, as usual, they made a bad deal,” Trump told a news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

“So we could conceivabl­y go back in,” Trump said, stressing his administra­tion’s commitment to environmen­tal issues, “clean water, clean air”, but added “we also want businesses that can compete”.

Mr Trump justified his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate accord, saying there was a “tremendous” penalty for using the country’s rich in gas and coal and oil and that hurt American businesses.

The Paris agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperatur­e rise in this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustr­ial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. — PTI

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