03 June, 2017
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump fulfilled another poll promise by announcing to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, a landmark pact signed by 195 nations to protect the planet from climate change.
New Zealand's Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett said that "so much of what (Trump) said is wrong", arguing that America was not paying a disproportionate cost to be part of the deal.
"It is crucial that the United States remain a leader on environmental issues", the spokesman for the Secretary-General noted. He said, "I do respect this decision but I do think it is an actual mistake both for the US and for our planet". The Paris accord envisioned the United States and China in the vanguard, showing developed and developing nations alike that steadily more ambitious emissions reduction goals could be achieved.
However, Mr Trump's proposed federal budget calls for a slashing of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget by almost 30 per cent and includes cuts to other agencies doing work on climate change like the ocean preservation activities of the US Coast Guard and climate diplomacy at the State Department.
Kremlin aide Andrei Belousov said the U.S. move punched a gaping hole in the Paris accord.
The US president said he can reconsider "re-entering" the accord if the terms are re-jigged to make them "fair" for American citizens and workers. We're basically passing the baton to every other country to innovate and lead. And if we can't, that's fine.
The price of oil has fallen sharply as investors bet that President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement will increase the country's oil and gas production. "It's tragic, but out of that tragedy, I believe the rest of the world will mobilize, will galvanize our efforts". Tillerson was among the signatories of the Fairbanks Declaration.
Trump created the business advisory group in December before taking office to assist him in making policy decisions. Yes, U.S. manufacturing jobs are shrinking - a direct result of globalization and a host of other factors.
Leaders of a cluster of small remote island states in the Pacific, which are at the forefront of the battle against climate change and already suffering the effects of unpredictable weather, expressed deep disappointment at the controversial move.
"Nowhere is that more important than in leading the global clean energy transition and the implementation - the full implementation without nuances - of the Paris Climate Agreement", he said.
Worldwide agreements of this type symbolically commit signatories to their undertakings, "even if there are no sanctions", he said.
Asked if Trump was right to say that the USA would continue to be the most environmentally friendly country in the world, Terblanche said the president's announcement had been complex and would take some time to analyse.
"Fighting climate change is a global consensus, not invented by China", said Li, an apparent reference to a tweet by Trump in 2012, which claimed that Beijing had invented global warming to "make USA manufacturing non-competitive".
"We are proud that Canada stands united with all the other parties that support the Agreement".