Bloomberg to world leaders: ignore Trump on climate
NEW YORK (AP): NEW YORK billionaire Michael Bloomberg urged world leaders not to follow President Donald Trump’s lead on climate change and declared his intention to help save an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
Bloomberg, who considered a presidential bid after serving three terms as New York City’s mayor, addressed his intensifying focus on climate change in an interview with The Associated Press. He said that there was no political motive tied to last week’s release of his new book, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet, co-authored by former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.
“I’m not running for office,” the 75-year-old Bloomberg said.
Instead of helping to reignite his political career, he said that the new book offered a specific policy objective: To help save an international agreement, negotiated in Paris, to reduce global carbon emissions.
The Trump administration is debating whether to abandon the pact as the president promised during his campaign. Under the agreement, the US pledged that by 2025, it would reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels, which would be a reduction of about 1.6 billion tons.
Bloomberg said that he believed that the US would hit that goal regardless of what Trump does because of leadership at the state level and market forces already at play in the private sector.
“Washington won’t determine the fate of our ability to meet our Paris commitment,” he said in an email Saturday to the AP. “And what a tragedy it would be if the failure to understand that led to an unravelling of the agreement. We hope this book will help to correct that wrong impression – and help save the Paris deal.”