Posted on 11/22/2016 10:45:01 AM PST by Kevin C
President-elect Donald Trump stepped back Tuesday from his pledge to quickly exit the Paris climate agreement, leaving significant room for staying in the pact.
In a meeting with New York Times journalists at the newspaper’s Manhattan headquarters, columnist Tom Friedman asked about Trump’s position on withdrawing from the climate pact, according to Times reporter Mike Grynbaum.
“I’m looking at it very closely,” Grynbaum reported Trump as saying on Twitter. “I have an open mind to it.” Trump also walked back on his previous position that climate change is a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese to threaten American manufacturing.
“I think there is some connectivity,” between human activity and climate change, Trump said. “Some, something. It depends on how much.”
Pulling out of Paris was one of Trump’s most high-profile pledges in the energy policy sphere on the campaign trail this year.
“We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement,” Trump said at a May speech in North Dakota.
He also promised to roll back all of President Obama’s executive actions and regulations on climate change, including the Clean Power Plan.
His position aligns with most mainstream Republican politicians. But diplomats and leaders around the work have harshly criticized Trump on his position on Paris since the election, and urged him to stay in the accord.
United Kingdom Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, a vocal Trump supporter, added his voice to the mix Tuesday, saying that he and the nation’s government would push Trump to retain the United States’ position in the agreement, according to the Guardian.
An aide in Trump’s transition team told Reuters days after the election that they are looking into ways to quickly exit the pact, including cutting off the United States’ membership in the United Nations’ entire climate agency.
The pact, reached last December, includes non-binding greenhouse gas limits that each country determined for itself. President Obama, a key figure in reaching the deal, pledged the United States to cut its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.
He has an open mind and after due consideration to all arguments, he will withdraw. That’s the Trump !
I don’t like the sound of this. But I’ll wait and see what happens.
But in the meantime, grrrrrrrr.
ha ha ha ha ha
Let loose the hounds of whiners.
Paris is dead.
Bigly.
Does Trump remember what he said on global warming during the campaign? Will someone please remind him?
Trump...you started out well....you damn well better not falter especially on this topic
Climate Nazis got to him already
Or just another hoax story based on nothing
just another hoax story
No, a thousand times no. The initial leaks from the NYT meeting are alarming. I want to see an authoritative report, but he needs to carryout his signature promises from the campaign trail or his base will decide he is just another politician.
I haven’t seen him renege on anything yet. I would venture to guess when he gets asked questions on various topics, he has a bag full of “safe” answers to just table the topic until he is ready to address it. “I have an open mind on the subject” is one of those.
I am hoping that he is just trying to look “Presidential,” and that in early January he says “I studied it and decided we’re out.”
If not, then we have not gotten what we thought we got, other than that he’s not Clinton.
Since the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to regulate environmental issues, Trump actually has no choice but to ignore climate-related treaties, unless he leads the states to ratify a climate amendment to the Constitution.
Yes he does. He’s just being diplomatic. In the end what matters is what he does, not how he gets there.
A lot of ‘ stories’ from the nytimes turned out to be false
The HILL pure liberal BS reporting!!!! Trump IS NOT a climate change believer!!!
I hope you're right. But what makes you say that?
He may be trolling Obama to get him to not do any more damage in the next 58 days.
“I think there is some connectivity,” between human activity and climate change, Trump said. “Some, something. It depends on how much.”
And the answer to that last sentence is everything.
Not when the Supreme Court has already acted.
Me thinks Mr McFrog is onto something
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