2 leaders affirm climate pledges
U.N. envoy says Trump sees humans’ environmental role
PARIS — The leaders of France and India on Saturday presented a common front on the need to fight climate change, as world governments began adjusting to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as part of a European tour, met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, where the leaders reaffirmed their commitments to the 2015 climate pact, in which 195 coun-
“Just because the U.S. got out of a club doesn’t mean we aren’t going to care about the environment.” — Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, defending the decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord
tries agreed to make efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The two leaders pledged to work together to cut carbon emissions, and Macron said he would travel to India before year’s end for a summit on promoting solar energy.
“In the fight for our planet, we plan to work side-by-side,” Macron said.
Modi said that fighting on behalf of “Mother Planet” is a gift for future generations.
India, the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is a critical player in the climate pact. France is the 17th-biggest carbon-emitter.
“We are in favor of this Paris Agreement and we will continue to work in that direction, even beyond the Paris Agreement, even if this agreement did not exist,” Modi said at the close of the two leaders’ talks.
France and India have launched the Global Solar Alliance aimed at developing solar energy and making it accessible to everyone. Macron described it as a “concrete instrument” in the fight against climate change. He added that other countries would be invited to the India summit on solar energy.
“We are both convinced our countries have much to do for ecological and environmental transition and for the fight against climate warming,” Macron said.
Trump announced last week that he was pulling the United States out of the pact.
TRUMP’S VIEWS
Trump does believe the climate is changing and that humans have a role in it, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper, adding that the president chose to pull out of the Paris pact because the rules hurt U.S. businesses.
“President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of the equation,” Haley said in an interview on State of the Union that airs today.
“The rest of the world wanted to tell us how to do it, and we’re saying, ‘We will do it, but we will do it under our terms,’” she said.
Haley said Trump made his decision “because it wasn’t possible to meet the conditions” under the pact agreed to by former President Barack Obama.
Trump, who in the past has called climate change a “hoax,” made contradictory statements about what exactly he believes while under pressure in recent weeks from other world leaders, the scientific community and even
Pope Francis, who has urged immediate action to change human activity causing harm to the environment.
The president has said that climate change is “nonexistent” but also at different times has hedged his answer and said there could be some connection to human activity.
Haley, the former South Carolina governor whom Trump appointed to the United Nations post, was asked to elaborate on the president’s thinking and told Tapper that “he knows that [the climate is] changing and that the U.S. has to be responsible for it, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
She also stressed that climate efforts wouldn’t be abandoned.
“Just because the U.S. got out of a club doesn’t mean we aren’t going to care about the environment,” she said.
During Friday’s daily news briefing, White House spokesman Sean Spicer and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said they had not had a discussion with the president on his views on climate change and that they could not answer questions about what the president thought.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump said Thursday during his announcement that he was pulling out of the pact. And though some Trump supporters carried “Pittsburgh not Paris” signs outside the White House on Saturday, the mayor of Pittsburgh has denounced the president’s move to abandon the global pact meant to safeguard the environment.
GROUP STEPS FORWARD
Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the U.N. pledging to meet the U.S.’ greenhouse gas-emissions targets under the climate accord, despite the country’s withdrawal from the agreement.
The unnamed group — which as of Thursday included 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university leaders and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the bloc to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.
In addition to Pittsburgh, mayors of cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City have signed on. Hewlett-Packard, Mars and dozens of other companies have also joined the effort.
Eighty-two presidents and chancellors of universities including Emory and Henry College, Brandeis and Wesleyan are also participating, organizers said.
“We’re going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed,” Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is coordinating the effort, said in an interview.
By redoubling their climate efforts, Bloomberg said, cities, states and corporations could fulfill, or even surpass, the pledge from the Obama administration that the U.S. would reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent by 2025, from their levels in 2005.
It was unclear how, exactly, that submission to the U.N. would occur. Christiana Figueres, a former top U.N. climate official, said there was no formal mechanism for entities that are not countries to be full parties in the Paris accord.
Bloomberg, a U.N. envoy on climate, also pledged to pay up to $15 million to support the U.N. agency that helps countries implement the agreement.
“Americans will honor and fulfill the Paris agreement by leading from the bottom up — and there isn’t anything Washington can do to stop us,” Bloomberg said Friday, appearing with Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Information for this article was contributed by Elaine Ganley and Sylvie Corbet of The Associated Press; by Gregory Viscusi of Bloomberg News; by Hiroko Tabuchi and Henry Fountain of The New York Times; and by Mary Jordan of The Washington Post.