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White House informing allies Trump will abandon climate pact

“I will be announcing my decision on Paris accord, Thursday at 3.00pm (12.30am Friday)”. Suggesting renegotiating re-entry was not a major priority, he said, “If we can, great”.

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The EU climate action commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, said in a statement that the bloc “deeply regrets the unilateral decision by the Trump administration” but vowed “the world can continue to count on Europe for global leadership”.

No matter what changes other countries made in their positions, China would follow its green, sustainable development concept, electrifying cars and strengthening measures to deal with climate change and would conscientiously follow the Paris agreement, Hua said.

White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt pushed for a withdrawal, which wouldn’t actually be finalized until near the end of Trump’s term.

This decision goes against the will of the American people, 71 percent of which support the Paris agreement.

Li stressed that it was in China’s own interest to stick to the climate deal.

The United States is the world’s second biggest carbon emitter, after China.

“China and the European Union… will implement the agreement”, a senior European Union official told reporters on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but it has been a vocal supporter of the Paris agreement.

Trump had several options for withdrawal, ultimately choosing a step that bridged a divide between remaining in the accord and a drastic, immediate withdrawal from the entire United Nations climate change treaty.

The White House had previously indicated that Trump could simply recalibrate emissions targets. The U.S. has agreed to reduce its emissions by 2025 to 26 percent to 28 percent of 2005 levels – about 1.6 billion tons. The White House said Trump made the decision to “maximize” the chances of negotiating a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, a decades-old diplomatic stalemate that Trump wants to help resolve.

But Cohn, Trump’s chief White House economic adviser, told reporters during the trip overseas that the president’s views on climate change were “evolving” following the discussions with European leaders. “I can get back to you”. Trump met Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has favored remaining in the agreement.

Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, has discussed the possibility of changing the US carbon reduction targets instead of pulling out of the deal completely.

Carbon dioxide stays in the air for 100 years and about one-fifth of what’s accumulated in the atmosphere over the last century came from the United States, more than any other country.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday said he thinks Trump doesn’t “comprehensively understand” the terms of the agreement that was brokered by former President Barack Obama. German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel on Saturday labelled the result of the “six against one” discussion “very hard, not to say very unsatisfactory”. “The Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States”. North Korea’s government has even signed the deal, and Russian Federation has too, although it has yet to formally ratify it. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russian Federation among the world’s industrialized economies in rejecting action to combat climate change.

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He added, “Fighting climate change is a global consensus, it’s not invented by China. and we realize that this is a global consensus agreement and that as a big developing nation we should shoulder our worldwide responsibility”.

Donald Trump Paris Accord