Reports in the US media say US President Donald Trump has
decided to pull the US out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement which came into
force on November 4, 2016, news agency AFP has tweeted.
AFP news agency @AFP
#BREAKING Trump poised to pull out of Paris climate deal: US
media
6:02 PM - 31 May 2017
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/869894384992571392
A CNN report Wednesday said, based on its interaction with
two senior US officials, that Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris
climate agreement and a formal announcement can be made as early as this week.
Axios, a new media company, wrote on the development that
"President Trump has made his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate
accord, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the decision."
The Axios report says that modalities of withdrawal are being worked out by a
team led US Environment Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who believes
Paris Climate Agreement is a "bad business deal" and has called for
an exit from it. The exit route can be "a full, formal withdrawal"
that may take up to three years or the "exiting the United Nations Climate
Change Treaty, a faster but more extreme process", the Axios report
further wrote.
Another report in Politico says that "President
Donald Trump is planning to pull the United States out of the Paris climate
change agreement, according to a White House official". The Politico
report states that it would be second such development when the US has rejected
a global climate treaty after endorsing it. 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Bush, a Republican, had withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate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. This time
also, it is a Republican president who is going to overturn a decision by his
Democrat predecessor Barack Obama.
Trump has been a vocal critic of the Paris climate deal and
he had promised to cancel the deal if he became the US President. During the recently
held G7 Summit in Sicily, he behaved on the issue like he was acting
unilaterally. While six G7 members, Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Japan and
Canada reiterated their commitment for the 2015 Paris climate deal, Trump
remained non-committal saying he needed more time to think over it. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel was blunt in her criticism over Trump’s stand saying
the developments say the US will not stay with the climate deal.
©SantoshChaubey