US President Donald Trump is reportedly on the verge of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, senior US officials told CNN. A group of 22 Republican senators sent a letter to Trump requesting him to make a clean exit from the deal.
A formal statement is expected this week and Trump could make good on his election promise. He pledged to "cancel the Paris climate agreement and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs."
Trump has previously called Global warming a hoax, and did not endorse the landmark climate change accord at a G7 summit of wealthy nations on Saturday 27 May.
The US President is meeting with Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator on Wednesday 31 May. Pruitt is an opponent of the deal and has claimed that the Paris agreement is a “bad deal” for the US.
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency told CNBC: “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
If the United States pulls out, this will line the country up with Syria and Nicaragua, who are two other countries not participating in the Paris Climate Agreement.
The United States is the world’s second-largest carbon dioxide emitter behind China.
Warning from scientists
US withdrawl could have far-reaching implications for the deal, which looks to commitment from big polluter countries to decrease greenhouse gas emissions which scientists say is causing more extreme weather conditions, rising sea levels and drought.
Trump's lack of enthusiasm for the Paris deal has incurred the wrath of German chancellor Angela Merkel. “The whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory,” she said.
“Here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one.”
China, the EU and Canada have all said they will stand by their commitments to the pact in the event of the United States withdrawing.
India will also stick by the agreement, a source told Reuters.
What is the Paris climate agreement?
The accord, agreed upon in 2015 by almost 200 countries in Paris, proposes to limit planetary warming partly by cutting carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The United States had previously, under the Obama administraiton, agreed to cutting its emissions by 26 – 28% from 2005 levels by 2025.
If the US reneged on these previous terms, universities and thinktanks have estimated that around 3bn tonnes of extra carbon dioxide would be added to the atmosphere every year, increasing the global temperature by 0.1C to 0.3C by the end of this century.
