Obama slams Trump for exiting Paris climate deal

President Trump announced the US will exit the Paris climate accord in a speech in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday.

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”. He held up fingers close together to demonstrate what he said were tiny amounts of global temperature change. Filmmaker Michael Moore called it a “crime against humanity”, and David Linde, the CEO of Participant Media – producers of An Inconvenient Sequel – called it a “blow to our collective ability to fight the climate crisis in time”.

He said the US could try to re-enter the deal under more favorable terms or work to establish “an entirely new transaction”.

The European Union’s top climate change official said Trump’s decision to leave the Paris accord made it “a sad day for the global community”. The United States would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only non-participants in the accord.

But the world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the Industrial Revolution, so this is more about preventing an additional 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit of warming.

Scientists say Earth is likely to reach more unsafe levels of warming sooner as a result of the president’s decision because America contributes so much to rising temperatures.

Without mentioning the USA specifically, he said China has been “actively promoting the Paris agreement and we were one of the first countries to ratify the Paris agreement”.

“That incredible diplomatic achievement could not have been secured without the decisive role of the United States of America”.

“So we’re getting out”.

“The Paris accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risk, and put us as a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world”, Trump said in a speech in the White House Rose Garden. But Obama says he’s confident nonetheless that USA cities, states and businesses will fill the void by taking the lead on protecting the climate. The decision has no direct impact on major US regulations on power plants and auto rules now aimed at reducing carbon emissions, although those are now under review by Trump as well.

Those targets are less ambitious than the USA commitment, which called for cutting emissions 26 percent or more compared with 2005 levels.

Officials in California and New York, including the mayors of Los Angeles and New York City, have already said that their cities will maintain commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.

Five Nordic countries have written a last-minute letter to President Donald Trump urging him to “make the right decision” and keep America signed onto the Paris climate accord.

According to him, compliant with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restriction that is placed on the USA could cost America as much as 2.7 million job loss by 2025.

Global leaders had pressed Trump not to abandon the accord.

In 2001, then US President George W Bush, a Republican, had withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, that was accepted by his Democrat predecessor Bill Clinton.

Trump made a decision to do just that after conferring with European allies at last week’s G-7 meetings in Italy.

Virtually every nation voluntarily committed to steps aimed at curbing global emissions of “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide generated from burning of fossil fuels.

It is unclear if the film, which was financed by Participant Media and is being released by Paramount Pictures, will be recut and edited to include the latest development, which, according to the film, would have a devastating effect on global climate and cause rising sea levels as well as superstorms like Hurricane Sandy.

Previous year was the warmest since records began in the 19th century, as global average temperatures continued a rise dating back decades that scientists attribute to greenhouse gases.

They warned that US withdrawal from the deal could speed up the effects of global climate change, worsening heat waves, floods, droughts and storms.

The White House is planning to a hold a meeting with technology leaders on June 19, an administration spokesman said Wednesday. The framework for reaching those goals is non-binding, and the USA was already on pace to hit its own arbitrary benchmark.

Still, he said, “Climate change is so crucial that it will be a tragedy if the USA walks out”.

The president also pointed out that the US has already cut its carbon emissions in recent years, with economywide CO2 emissions declining 12% since 2006. Some of his aides have been searching for a middle ground in an effort to thread the needle between his base of supporters who oppose the deal for fear it will hamper US economic growth and those warning that a USA exit would deal a blow to the fight against global warming as well as to worldwide US leadership.

Even if the country is no longer part of the agreement local governments or the private sector could step in to try to meet goals in the agreement to reduce emissions of gases that contribute to global warming.