WASHINGTON —President Trump is still deliberating whether to keep the U.S. in an international agreement to reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, even though he has called climate change a hoax.
The White House postponed a meeting Tuesday where top aides were to have hashed out differences on what to do about the non-binding international deal forged in Paris in December 2015. The agreement allowed rich and poor countries to set their own goals to reduce carbon dioxide and went into effect last November, after the U.S., China and other countries ratified it.
Not all of Trump’s advisers share his skeptical views on climate change – or the Paris pact.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at his Senate confirmation hearing in January that he supports staying in the deal. However, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, said last week that the Paris pact “is a bad deal for America.”
Officials had planned to discuss options on Tuesday, with the goal of providing a recommendation to Trump, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity despite the president’s criticism of the use of anonymous sources.
Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed the postponement of the meeting on scheduling conflicts among advisers expected to attend. Some, she said, wanted to accompany the president on his Wisconsin trip on Tuesday, and the White House decided to reschedule its internal climate talks.
Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to pull out of the Paris accord, but has since wavered on the issue.
He told the editorial board of The New York Times in an interview last year that he was “looking at it very closely …. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.”
Yet some of his aides, including Pruitt, see the deal as standing in opposition to Trump’s “America first” mantra.
“Paris is something that we need to really look at closely, because it’s something we need to exit, in my opinion,” Pruitt said in an interview last week, “It was an America second, third or fourth kind of approach.”
Under the agreement, the U.S. pledged to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. Besides continuing Obama’s efforts to reduce U.S. heat-trapping gases, Trump has two general options.
One option is to pull the United States out of the non-binding agreement. Another option is to do nothing. Trump could badmouth the treaty, but not formally withdraw from it. If the U.S. fails to reach its goal, technically nothing happens. There is no enforcement action.
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