Haley: Trump believes climate changing

President Donald Trump, who has famously called climate change a “hoax,” does believe the climate is changing and that humans have a role in it, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told CNN’S Jake Tapper.

“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,” which will be fully aired Sunday.

“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 Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord “because it wasn’t possible to meet the conditions” under the pact agreed to when Barack Obama was president.

Her remarks come amid global criticism of Trump for withdrawing from the climate pact, which was ratified by nearly 150 countries that agreed to curb carbon emissions to mitigate global warming. Coalfired power plants in the U.S., as elsewhere, would have to have meet standards under the pact.

Trump has made contradictory statements about what exactly he believes amid mounting pressure from other world leaders, the scientific community and even Pope Francis, who has urged urgent action to change human activity causing harm to the environment. The president has said flat out that climate change is “nonexistent” but also at different times hedged his answer, and said there could be some connection to human activity.

Haley told Tapper: “(Trump) knows that it’s changing and that the U.S. has to be responsible for it and that’s what we’re going to do.” She said the U.S. pulled out because the rules hurt U.S. businesses.