Donald Trump on Monday moved to withdraw the US, the world’s second biggest emitter of planet-heating pollution, from the Paris climate agreement for a second time, and put the United Nations on notice.
On his first day back as president, Trump signed an executive order on stage in front of supporters at an arena in Washington DC which he said was aimed at quitting what he called the “unfair one-sided Paris climate accord rip off”.
He also signed a letter to the United Nations giving it notice that the US was exiting, which starts the formal process of withdrawal from the world’s main effort to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
It will take about a year for the withdrawal to be formalized.
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When enacted, the US will join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the global agreement, which Joe Biden had rejoined in 2021 after Trump confirmed he would exit it in his first term in 2017.
Trump, who also signed eight other executive orders on stage, told his supporters at the arena: “The United States will not sabotage its own industries while China pollutes with impunity. China uses a lot of dirty energy, but they produce a lot of energy. When that stuff goes up in the air, it doesn’t stay there … It floats into the United States of America after three and a half to five and a half days.”
The confirmation of the move was also in a White House document published earlier Monday outlining America First Priorities, in a package of measures under the headline “Make America affordable and energy dominant again”.
Trump has also pledged to reverse Biden’s efforts to grow the US’s clean energy sector, which Trump has called “the green new scam”, promising in his inauguration address to “drill, baby, drill” and remove all limits on America’s booming fossil fuel industry.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
