The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In making the announcement, President Donald Trump said the agreement “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers…and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”
According to the President, the Agreement not only subjects American citizens to harsh economic restrictions, it also fails in its environmental mission.
“I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States – which is what it does – the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.”
Mr. Trump asserted that under the Agreement, China will be able to increase emissions for “a staggering” 13 years, while India has made its participation contingent on receiving billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries. He further suggested that while the U.S.’s nationally determined contribution would limit the development of clean coal in the United States, China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. “In short,” said President Trump, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of…the United States, and ships them to foreign countries.”
President Trump said that even if the Paris Agreement were fully implemented with complete compliance from all nations, “It is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.” He added, “14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from…America’s reductions in the year 2030, after we had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our business and for our homes.”
President Trump said he is willing to immediately work with U.S. Democratic Party leaders either to renegotiate the terms of U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, or pursue a new deal “that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.”
President Trump stated, that under his administration “The United States will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on earth…But we are not going to put our business out of work and we’re not going to lose our jobs.”
