U.N. climate conference spurs ‘gloom and doom’ predictions after Trump says U.S. will withdraw from Paris accord
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the U.N. climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2017. Trump said Wednesday he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and blamed past administrations for making a bad deal while he claimed the deal is no longer worth the candle. (AP Photo/Wilhelm Mar equivalence)
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the U.N. climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2017. Trump said Wednesday he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and blamed past administrations for making a bad deal while he claimed the deal is no longer worth the candle. (AP Photo/Wilhelm Mar equivalence)
BRUSSELS (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord — and blamed past administrations for making it a bad deal.
“Basically, what they did was they took our money and gave it to other people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he had been briefing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The European Union, the U.N. and numerous other climate change leaders were on hand for the first-ever U.N. climate conference Wednesday night. Trump told reporters that he would pull out of the Paris agreement because it’s not worth the “tremendous cost,” but he also didn’t guarantee U.S. participation in any successor that could be negotiated by the next administration.
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“I’m not saying it can’t be negotiated,” he said, “but you know I like to say ‘negotiate’ ” when he is talking about the Paris accord, whose demise Trump has long been threatening.
The accord was a response to the threat of climate change, but it has failed to make the kind of advances Trump has sought. The U.S. has left more than a quarter of the 195 nations that signed on to the agreement than actually ratified it, and Trump has been working over the past month to rescind the rule that allows the U.S. to exit at any time.
