‘US should stay in Paris climate accord but renegotiate it’

WASHINGTON: The US should stay in the Paris climate accord but renegotiate it, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Tuesday, alleging that some European countries were not doing enough to curb emissions.

A decision is expected by President Donald Trump next month on whether or not to stay in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement limiting global carbon emissions, signed by 194 countries.

“I’m not going to say I’m going to go tell the president of the United States, ‘Let’s just walk away from the Paris accord’,” Perry said during the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York.

“But what I am going to say is, I think we probably need to renegotiate it,” he said.

“We need to sit down and they need to get serious about it,” he said.

Perry offered no details about how he thought it should be renegotiated, but said said the US and China were making a real impact on reducing emissions.

He then questioned the actions of France and Germany.

He gave no specifics on France, other than to say he gave French and German ministers a look that was meant to imply, “What are you all doing?” during a G-7 meeting in Rome earlier this month.

Germany, he went on, has made a decision to ‘get out of the nuclear business’ and “double down — to hear them tell it — on renewables,” he said. — AFP