The news we all knew was coming became official Thursday afternoon: President Donald Trump has decided that the United States will pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. America thereby joined Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not part of the historic deal.

“I don’t know what's worse, the fact that Donald Trump may have doomed the planet or the fact that he announced it like it’s an episode of The Bachelorette,” Trevor Noah said on Thursday’s Daily Show before imitating the president’s dramatic Rose Garden announcement. “‘Earth, we had a great time in the hot tub, but I’ve gotta give a rose to coal, my black beauty, I choose you.’”

“We all joke about him destroying the world, but this could be it,” the host continued. “And can I just say, telling nature to go fuck itself while standing in a garden is a pretty gangster move, I’m not going to lie. The only way that could have been more messed up is if he did it with a polar bear standing in the background. Although I’m sure Eric would have shot the polar bear.”

“After the Earth’s temperature crosses a certain threshold we may not be able to go back,” Noah warned. “It’s like telling your girlfriend that her friend is hot. That problem is manmade and irreversible. You can never take it back.”

What makes matters worse, Noah argued, is that nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris deal. “Even Israel and Palestine are on the same side when it comes to climate change,” he said. In response to Trump saying he was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris, Noah said, “And every day, the citizens of Paris are, like, thank fuck for that.”

But while Trump thinks his decision will help bring back “old-school industrial jobs,” Noah informed him that those coal and steel jobs are never coming back. “There are certain things that you can’t bring back,” he said. “You can’t bring back coal jobs. It may have been big back in the day, but it’s not going to work now. It’s like Baywatch: you can’t save it.”

In his speech, Trump posited that the rest of the world was “laughing” at the United States for signing on to the agreement in the first place. “No one was laughing at you, Donald,” Noah said. “I mean, well, not for this. They laugh at you for many other things, but not for this. The other countries were cheering, because it was a chance to save Mother Earth, not screw Uncle Sam.”</s>This comes as both Los Angeles and its sole rival for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, French capital Paris, have pledged sustainability issues as a key part of their respective bids.

The Agreement, signed in 2015, required each signatory country to determine its own contribution it should make in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

It was presented as a key means to bring all nations together to meet collective targets to combat global warming.

The US now joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries to have rejected the agreement.

They are hoping to negotiate a new deal which would better better benefit American workers.

Garcetti, the Democrat Mayor of Los Angeles who frequently opposes the Republican administration of Trump, immediately criticised the decision.

“Climate change is a fact of life that people in Los Angeles and cities around the world live with every day," he said in a statement.

"It is a grave threat to our health, our environment, and our economy - and it is not debatable or negotiable.

“This is an urgent challenge, and it’s much bigger than one person.

"With the President pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, LA will lead by committing to the goals of the accord - and will work closely with cities across America and the world to do the same.”

Garcetti is a co-founder of a "Mayors National Climate Action Agenda" which has supported adopting the resolutions of the Paris deal in their respective cities across the country.

It is unclear whether many voting International Olympic Committee (IOC) members would be affected by Trump's decision, but sustainability is a central plank of the Agenda 2020 reforms introduced by President Thomas Bach in 2014.

Jeff Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, a member of the IOC's The Olympic Programme (TOP) sponsorship scheme, was among others to criticise the decision via social media.

"Disappointed with today’s decision on the Paris Agreement," he tweeted.

"Industry must now lead and not depend on Government."

Yiannis Exarchos, the chief executive of Olympic Broadcasting Services, also posted: "I have a feeling that this may prove to be a pivotal moment in US history...

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emmanuel Macron have also each criticised the decision.

Hidalgo said Trump has made a "dramatic mistake" while Macron took the unusual step of speaking in English from the steps of the Elysée Palace when claiming he thought it was an "actual mistake both for the US and for our planet".

Paris 2024 have particularly heralded sustainability building on the success of the Paris Agreement as a key part of their bid.

Hidalgo spoke about these issues at length during the city's first bid presentation at the Association of National Olympic Committee General Assembly in Doha in November.

Los Angeles have been slightly less vocal, but insists that their bid concept requiring no new venues perfectly embraces sustainability.

They also unveiled a Sustainability and Legacy Committee during last month's Evaluation Commission inspection visit to the city.

It is possible that these recent developments could also impact the ongoing discussions to award both the 2024 and 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games this year.

Paris is currently thought more likely to land the 2024 edition while Los Angeles would then host in 2028.

Trump is currently a supporter of the LA bid despite his tense relations with Garcetti.

He is expected to invite Bach to the White House for a meeting over the next few weeks.

An IOC spokesperson has told insidethegames that there is "nothing concrete as yet" when asked if a date had been proposed.</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, two senior US officials familiar with his plans told CNN Wednesday.

The decision would be a significant foreign policy break with nearly every other nation on earth and a major reversal of the Obama administration’s efforts on climate change.

Trump met Tuesday with a key voice advocating for withdrawal, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. He meets Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who supported remaining in the deal.

The precise mechanism for withdrawal hasn’t yet been determined, but Trump has made clear he plans to fulfill his campaign promises to withdraw.

A formal announcement is expected at some point this week. The officials cautioned the plans could change until Trump makes his decision public.

The administration’s decision comes after months of internal debate and speculation about what Trump, who campaigned on leaving the deal, would do once he took office.

The White House was initially slated to make a final decision on the climate accord earlier this month, but delayed the decision until the G7 meeting in Sicily. At the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters the climate debate was “controversial” and that the leaders of the other G7 nations — France, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy — all urged Trump to remain a part of the 2015 agreement.

Aides to Trump said he was listening with an open mind to the other leaders’ arguments about Paris, but had yet to decide whether to withdraw the US from the pact.

The meetings inside the West Wing had been contentious, sources told CNN, as aides expressed their deep grievances over the climate agreement that President Barack Obama helped broker with every country except Syria and Nicaragua.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the former head of Breitbart, had pressed Trump to stick with his campaign promise and leave the deal.

But Ivanka Trump, the President’s top aide and daughter, pressed aides to look at the full picture when considering what withdrawal could mean. Trump’s son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner, was said to be neutral on the deal.

Tillerson and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry had both advised against leaving the deal, sources said.

Trump has also been bombarded with voices urging him to stay in the deal from outside the White House. Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and founder of Tesla, tweeted earlier this month that he spoke with Trump about sticking with the deal. And former Vice President Al Gore, according to a person familiar with a call between he and the President, spoke with Trump earlier this month.

Gore, who met with Trump during his presidential transition, has been an outspoken critic of leaving the Paris accord.

Obama and a host of other countries signed the climate change agreement in 2015 and the former president touted it as the “best chance we have” to save the planet.

“The Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis,” Obama said, speaking from the White House. “It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way.”

But Republicans have slammed the climate deal and Trump joined the chorus when he ran for president.

Trump said he would “cancel” the deal on the campaign trial and his campaign’s energy plan included a pledge to “cancel the Paris climate agreement and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will announce his decision on whether to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord during a Rose Garden event Thursday afternoon.

Trump promoted his announcement Wednesday night on Twitter, after a day in which U.S. allies around the world sounded alarms about the likely consequences of a U.S. withdrawal. Trump himself kept everyone in suspense, saying he was still listening to “a lot of people both ways.”

The White House signaled that Trump was likely to decide on exiting the global pact — fulfilling one of his principal campaign pledges — though top aides were divided. And the final decision may not be entirely clear-cut: Aides were still deliberating on “caveats in the language,” one official said.

Everyone cautioned that no decision was final until Trump announced it. The president has been known to change his thinking on major decisions and tends to seek counsel from both inside and outside advisers, many with differing agendas, until the last minute.

Abandoning the pact would isolate the U.S. from a raft of international allies who spent years negotiating the 2015 agreement to fight global warming and pollution by reducing carbon emissions in nearly 200 nations. While traveling abroad last week, Trump was repeatedly pressed to stay in the deal by European leaders and the Vatican. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world’s industrialized economies.

American corporate leaders have also appealed to the businessman-turned-president to stay. They include Apple, Google and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

In a Berlin speech, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that fighting climate change is a “global consensus” and an “international responsibility.”

“China in recent years has stayed true to its commitment,” said Li, speaking in Berlin Wednesday.

Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, enacted the deal without U.S. Senate ratification. A formal withdrawal would take years, experts say, a situation that led the president of the European Commission to speak dismissively of Trump on Wednesday.

Trump doesn’t “comprehensively understand” the terms of the accord, though European leaders tried to explain the process for withdrawing to him “in clear, simple sentences” during summit meetings last week, Jean-Claude Juncker said in Berlin. “It looks like that attempt failed,” Juncker said. “This notion, ‘I am Trump, I am American, America first and I am getting out,’ that is not going to happen.”

Some of Trump’s aides have been searching for a middle ground — perhaps by renegotiating the terms of the agreement — in an effort to thread the needle between his base of supporters who oppose the deal and those warning that a U.S. exit would deal a blow to the fight against global warming as well as to worldwide U.S. leadership.

That fight has played out within Trump’s administration.

Trump met Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has favored remaining in the agreement. Chief strategist Steve Bannon supports an exit, as does Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, has discussed the possibility of changing the U.S. carbon reduction targets instead of pulling out of the deal completely. Senior adviser Jared Kushner generally thinks the deal is bad but still would like to see if emissions targets can be changed.

Trump’s influential daughter Ivanka Trump’s preference is to stay, but she has made it a priority to establish a review process so her father would hear from all sides, said a senior administration official. Like the other officials, that person was not authorized to describe the private discussions by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Wednesday in Alaska that he had “yet to read what the actual Paris Agreement is,” and would have to read it before weighing in.

Scientists say Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming sooner if the U.S. retreats from its pledge because America contributes so much to rising temperatures. Calculations suggest withdrawal could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide in the air a year — enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucy, Michael Biesecker and Seth Borenstein in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.</s>(CNN) If President Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, it likely won't be a quick, overnight process. The exit could take as long as one to almost four years.

Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement , according to two senior US officials familiar with his plans.

He will announce his decision in the White House Rose Garden at 3 p.m. Thursday, he tweeted . He ended his tweet with: "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M. The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

When former President Barack Obama formally entered into the Paris Agreement in 2016, he did so as an "executive agreement" in which he didn't need Senate approval. This is why Trump can now leave the Paris Agreement without consulting the Senate.

The precise mechanism for withdrawal hasn't yet been determined, and White House officials cautioned plans could change until Trump makes his decision public. Language for the withdrawal was still being prepared Wednesday, and will likely include specific legal conditions crafted by Trump's administration.

After that, the rules mandate a one-year notice period, which would mean a withdrawal in late 2020 -- after the next presidential election on November 3, 2020.

1. At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary.

2. Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.

The UNFCCC has nearly universal membership and provides the underlying framework for international cooperation to combat climate change. This led to the Kyoto Protocol and then the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Any country that leaves the UNFCCC "shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this Agreement," according to Article 28 of the Paris Agreement.

The US could leave the UNFCCC with one year's notice , which gets it out of the Paris Agreement without having to wait until November 2020.

Yes, it's possible to remain in the agreement and just fail to meet any of its terms.

Certain parts of the agreement are legally required, but one key factor is that it doesn't bind countries to actually meet their climate targets . For example, there are no sanctions if the United States breaks its promise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.

But this option may not be the likely route, since two senior officials say Trump is expected to withdraw from the climate deal.

Established at the 2015 conference, the Paris climate agreement between 195 countries pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

The Paris Agreement was in part brokered by Obama and was seen as a major breakthrough after the previous accord, the Kyoto protocol, failed to include the US and China, the world's two biggest polluters.

Obama touted it as the "best chance we have" to save the planet.

The US committed to reducing carbon emissions by 26-28% in a decade in signing onto the agreement. The main driver of the reduction was Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would have closed coal-fired power plants.

A host of countries -- from China to Germany -- have committed to stay with the Paris Agreement regardless of whether the United States leaves it.</s>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Three Democratic governors said Thursday they won’t let the United States back away from a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite President Donald Trump decision to withdraw from an international pact.

“This is an insane move by this president,” California Gov. Jerry Brown said, blasting the decision as “deviant behavior from the highest office in the land.”

Brown joined Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York to form the U.S. Climate Alliance to uphold the Paris climate agreement, a pact involving nearly 200 nations aimed at slowing the warming of the planet.

The three states already belong to an emissions reduction pact of states and cities worldwide, but Thursday’s action marked a direct stand against the Trump administration and a formal commitment to upholding the targets of the Paris agreement.

Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe also expressed interest in joining the new pact.

“We governors are going to step into this cockpit and fly the plane,” Inslee told reporters. “The president wants to ground it – we’re going to fly it.”

Trump formally announced his decision to leave the historic international agreement after months of teasing the action. He criticized the pact as a job-killer that put the United States as an unfair advantage.

It may be years, however, before the country can formally exit the deal, but Trump said he’ll immediately halt implementation. He said he would consider re-entry if the U.S. could get a better deal.

Republican politicians and representatives of the coal industry cheered Trump’s action.

“President Trump’s courageous decision to exit the Paris Accord recognizes that the United States is not legally bound to an Obama-era agreement that set unrealistic emissions targets at the expense of billions of American taxpayer dollars without the approval of Congress,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who joined nine other states in urging Trump to leave the agreement.

Under the Paris agreement, negotiated during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, the United States voluntarily committed to reducing polluting emissions by 1.6 billion tons by 2025.

The Democratic governors’ new pact commits to that same goal, which requires a 26 to 28 percent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels.

Specific targets haven’t been set for each state. California, New York and Washington together account for about 10 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, Brown’s office said.

California is already working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, and Brown has cast himself as Trump’s chief foil on climate policy. It’s unclear when discussions between the three governors began, but they announced their new pact within an hour of Trump’s announcement.

Brown is about to begin a trip to China to discuss emissions-reduction policies with other leaders and has promised to fill the void left by the Trump administration. At home, Brown is battling to reauthorize a cap-and-trade program that expires in 2020, a key piece of his political legacy. He’s said California’s economy is proof that combating climate change isn’t the economic deadweight Trump suggests.

Washington state is also moving ahead with capping carbon emissions and requiring power plants and oil refineries to reduce emissions over time. In New York, Cuomo announced he would use executive orders to ensure his state continues to abide by the Paris agreement.

West Virginia Coal Association Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton said U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord would build confidence in U.S. mining and industry even if it wouldn’t make major changes on the ground. Trump promised during his campaign to bring back coal mining jobs.

“I think it slows down this rush toward punitive measures against the United States industrial base and mining industry,” Hamilton said.

Associated Press writers David Klepper in Albany, New York, Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington, and Michael Virtanen in Morgantown, West Virginia, contributed.</s>President Donald Trump on Thursday will announce his decision on whether to keep the United States in a landmark global pact to fight climate change, after a source close to the matter said he was preparing to pull out of the Paris accord.

Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday night he would make the announcement at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Thursday in the White House Rose Garden, ending his tweet with “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

An American withdrawal, promised by Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, would deepen a rift with U.S. allies and align the United States with Syria and Nicaragua as the world’s only non-participants in the landmark 195-nation accord agreed upon in Paris in 2015.

The White House remained tight-lipped about Trump’s decision. “The president has listened to people from all sides and ultimately he’s going to make the best decision for … the American worker,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday Trump was favoring an exit and was working out terms of the planned withdrawal with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, an oil industry ally and climate change doubter. The source said any withdrawal announced by Trump could have conditions or caveats that were under discussion.

The Vatican, which under Pope Francis’ insistence has strongly backed the accord, would see a U.S. exit as disaster and “a huge slap in the face,” Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, a senior Vatican official, told the Rome newspaper La Repubblica.

At their meeting last month, the pope gave Trump a signed copy of his 2015 encyclical letter calling for protecting the environment from the effects of climate change and backed scientific evidence that it is caused by human activity.

U.S. supporters of the pact said any pullout by Trump would represent an abdication of American leadership on a leading issue of our time and would show that the United States cannot be trusted to follow through on international commitments.

The pact was the first legally binding global deal to fight climate change. Virtually every nation voluntarily committed to steps aimed at curbing global emissions of “greenhouse” gases. These include carbon dioxide generated from burning of fossil fuels that scientists blame for a warming planet, sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms.

Scientists have said a U.S. withdrawal from the deal could speed up the effects of global climate change, leading to heat waves, floods, droughts and more frequent violent storms.

During the campaign, Trump said the accord would cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars with no tangible benefit. Trump has expressed doubts about climate change, at times calling it a hoax to weaken U.S. industry.

The Republican vowed at the time to “cancel” the Paris deal within 100 days of becoming president on Jan. 20, part of an effort to bolster U.S. oil and coal industries.

Since taking office, he has come under pressure from some advisers, close U.S. allies, corporate CEOs, Democrats and some fellow Republicans to keep the United States in the accord.

The United States, under former President Barack Obama, had committed to reduce its emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The United States, exceeded only by China in greenhouse gas emissions, accounts for more than 15 percent of the worldwide total.

Last year was the warmest since records began in the 19th century, as global average temperatures continued a rise dating back decades that leading climate scientists attribute to man-made greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who pressed Trump to stay in the pact last week at a meeting of the G7 industrialized nations, on Thursday described the accord as essential and said she was pleased many other governments agreed.

Merkel met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, and they pledged to continue fighting climate change.

China, which overtook the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2007, and the European Union will seek on Friday to save the Paris agreement, with Li meeting top EU officials in Brussels.

In a statement backed by all 28 EU states, the EU and China were poised to commit to full implementation of the agreement, officials said.

The European Union is not considering imposing trade sanctions on the United States if Trump withdraws, EU Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said in Copenhagen.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted on Thursday, “Climate action is not just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia attaches great significance to the accord, and “the effectiveness of this convention is likely to be reduced without its key participants.”

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, whose Pacific island nation already is grappling with rising sea levels, expressed disappointment with Trump’s expected move but applauded other countries for redoubling their commitments.

“My country’s survival depends on every country delivering on the promises they made in Paris – our own commitment to it will never waver,” Heine said in a statement.</s>President Trump announced Thursday that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord of 2016, making it the largest and most influential country not to participate in the international agreement aimed at mitigating climate change.

While Trump said his decision was the first step in an effort to see if there was a “better deal” for the United States, the decision to opt out has been met with concern from many in the international community. In New Jersey, reactions have been largely negative.

Here is what some New Jersey lawmakers and advocacy organizations had to say about the decision.

Menendez said the decision “will have grave consequences for generations to come.”

“It signals to the world that in the face of collective challenges, the U.S. will choose a path of isolation rather than engagement, based on a willful denial of fact,” he said in a statement. “By capitulating to the demands of fringe voices who reject science and promote reliance on the dirty energy sources of the past, the United States is abdicating our leadership and our responsibility to be stewards of the environment.”

Before Trump formally announced his intention to withdraw, Booker went on a 12-tweet spree to denounce the impending decision. He also released a statement ahead of the final decision claiming that a withdrawal would be a “historic blunder” for the nation “that would put the interests of a few big polluters and climate deniers before American security, the economy, and the environment.”

“The rest of the world is charging ahead with or without the support of the United States government,” Booker said. “The United States can either lead the world and reap the benefits of new jobs, new innovation, and new opportunities, or the world can leave us behind.”

Norcross said Trump was “prioritizing corporate polluters over the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren.”

“We should be following sound science, embracing global cooperation and building a 21st century clean energy economy,” he said in a statement. “This administration continues to do the opposite, which is preventing our country from moving forward. Building the clean energy economy is the real way we’ll bring high-wage jobs to America.”

MacArthur said climate change is a “critical issue” and that the United States must act as “good stewards” of the environment. He did not outright endorse or reject Trump’s decision to withdraw.

“In any future agreement, we must protect American workers from a competitive disadvantage and ensure that nations across the globe also carry their weight,” he said.

Pallone, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Trump’s “shortsighted” and “negligent” decision puts the future at risk.

“By abandoning this agreement, President Trump is showing the world that an American commitment can be reversed on a whim,” Pallone said. “This devastating decision abdicates our role as a global leader, and breaks our promise to nearly nations to work together to address climate change.”

At a Tuesday night town hall meeting, Lance said that he supported the Paris climate agreement but that he wished it imposed stricter regulations on other nations. He has not released an official comment since Trump’s decision to withdraw.

“I hope — but I don’t know the answer to this– that the administration won’t leave the Paris agreement,” Lance told constituents in Cranford on Tuesday. “I would have preferred an agreement that is stronger regarding emissions from other countries — China and India, for example.”

Sires said he was disappointed in Trump’s decision but that he hopes the administration and Congress can “work together” to curb carbon emissions.

“This shortsighted and selfish act not only damages our nation’s credibility abroad, but also endangers the future of our planet for the sake of scoring political points,” Sires said in a statement. “By withdrawing from these commitments, we are telling the international community that the U.S. government is not serious about addressing climate change.”

On Twitter, Pascrell said the decision to pull out of the agreement was “based on propaganda pushed by anti-climate hard liners.”

Payne said that Trump’s decision “sends a signal that the United States will not honor its commitments to our international partners.”

“Climate change increases extreme weather events and natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, one of the deadliest and costliest storms in U.S. history,” he said.

“President Trump cannot continue to bury his head in the sand about the devastating consequences of climate change at the expense of our planet’s future,” Watson Coleman said in a statement. “This decision is proof that even in his inadequacy as our nation’s leader he has surrounded himself with people who are just as ill-equipped or ill-advised to make decisions with international implications.”

On Twitter, Murphy said New Jersey must push back on Trump at the state level.

“Pres. Trump’s decision to pull out of Paris Accord will do irreparable harm to the world. Future generations will judge us on how we react,” he said on Twitter.

“Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement will go down as one of the worst human rights abuses of the 21st century,” Johnson said on Twitter.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club

“Even though Trump pulled out of Paris this afternoon, we still had two coal plants in New Jersey close today: PSEG’s Hudson and Mercer plants,” he said. “The country will still move forward with clean energy and New Jersey will next year. Our state will see the most consequences from climate change including sea level rise and flooding. This is only the beginning of the battle and we will continue to fight to protect our planet!”

Ed Potosnak, executive director of New Jersey League of Conservation Voters

“By withdrawing from the agreement to reduce the toxic emissions that are causing the Earth to warm, President Trump has made the U.S. an outlier like Syria, the other nation opposed to the Paris accord,” he said. “The president’s colossal mistake makes it more important than ever to ensure that New Jersey has a governor and a Legislature committed to establishing a clean energy future by creating green jobs and transitioning to a clean energy economy.”</s>As Donald Trump leads the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is necessary to look at the modalities of the walkout, what it involves, the underlying reasons and the decision's environmental, economic and geopolitical impact. Before I tackle some key questions though, one point must be stressed at the outset: paradoxical as it may sound, Trump's decision carries no direct legal consequences for the US or immediate economic or ecological consequences for the world.

That is because a) the Paris Agreement is "non-binding" in nature and b) regardless of what the president of the United States thinks, more than two-thirds of Americans are worried about climate change and its biggest business leaders are moving aggressively in the right direction to control greenhouse gas emissions, supplemented by significant efforts from states like New York or California. Despite Trump's efforts to roll back Barack Obama's climate policies, therefore, US will remain on course to achieve the modest emission cuts that were anyway part of the Paris deal.

So does it mean Trump's withdrawal is inconsequential?

Quite the contrary. Trump has, through his ill-advised, narrow, illogical and dangerous move risked undermining the entire Paris deal which may result in poorer nations following in his footsteps and triggering a race to the bottom. Even if such a possibility doesn't come to pass (unlikely), by reneging on its promise, the world's wealthiest nation and its second-biggest polluter has placed an unfair economic and political burden on the rest. The US president is basically saying, "Look, we won't be held responsible for our actions and if you want to stick to the deal, pick up the tab." In these terms, his decision is morally reprehensible, illogical and patently callous.

As The New York Times points out in a scathing editorial, "In huge neon letters, it (Trump's move) sends a clear message that this president knows nothing or cares little about the science underlying the stark warnings of environmental disruption. That he knows or cares little about the problems that disruption could bring, especially in poor countries. That he is unmindful that America, historically the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, has a special obligation to help the rest of the world address these issues."

After the disastrous fate of Kyoto Protocol (which a George Bush-led US sabotaged), the United Nations acknowledged its inability to enforce the legality of international treaties. Hence the cornerstone of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was consensus based on self-imposed targets. Each country, in keeping with its developmental stage, pledged to either immediately cut emissions (like the US) or working towards reducing carbon footprint and putting in place technology and infrastructure that makes it possible for achieving the goals in a stipulated time (like India). The difference in goals arises out of the fact that a developed country like the US is in a better position to cut its emission by 26 percent in 2025 compared to its 2005 levels than India, whose millions of poor are still denied basic necessities like electricity, and hence would require more time to shun fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy.

The illogicality in Trump's action lies in the fact that Trump could have very well junked some of Obama's policies even by staying within the Paris deal precisely because it's non-binding.

As Washington Postwrites: "The Paris Agreement does not formally obligate the United States to make any particular level of emissions cuts. All it does is ask countries to announce emissions plans of their choosing and report on their progress. It has no major implications for US sovereignty and demands no particular policy balance between environmental and industrial concerns. If the Trump administration wants to move that balance toward fossil fuel interests, it does not have to leave the Paris agreement to do so."

Trump's claim that the Paris deal is undermining US coal mine jobs is bunkum because coal's decline as a fossil fuel in American market precedes the Paris accord, and is more a result of cheap natural gas cornering the market. Also, as The New York Timessaid, Trump forgot to mention that while coal jobs were declining "employment in the solar industry, for instance, is more than 10 times what it was a decade ago, 2,60,000 jobs as opposed to 24,000".

If we look at Trump's speech during the announcement (full text available here) it's hard to distinguish it from his campaign rallies.

Trump is relinquishing America's global leadership role — and with it all the necessary moral and economic burdens — for a more inward-looking US that seeks a 'level-playing field'. This has been a recurrent motif in Trump's speeches. It signifies that he perceives the world to be prospering at America's cost. It may be his political positioning or a deep-rooted conviction but Trump appears to be convinced that it is not incumbent on the US to ensure that the world remains a fair, just and equitable place when the cost of ensuring these values are hampering its own interests. Is he correct in his assessment? This is an irrelevant question. What matters is that he thinks he is right, and the world must somehow deal with it.

According to Trump, America isn't the sole superpower, world's most powerful geopolitical player, world's biggest economy or the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases but a nation wronged and sucked dry by its opportunistic allies and renegade nations and it is his duty to set things right.

Was he justified in blaming India?

Absolutely not. Trump's rant against China and India points to his inability or reluctance to grasp basic facts. It is perhaps too much to expect knowledge of history, logic and awareness from a snake-oil seller occupying the world's highest seat of power but Trump needs to be reminded that India's per capita carbon emission is a tenth of America's, not to speak of the fact that the US has been the world's biggest polluter for centuries and is majorly responsible for raising the global temperature.

Brookings Institution fellow Tanvi Madan took to Twitter to post three graphs (relying on World Bank data) which may be relevant here to show how unjustified Trump's rants against India, in particular, were:

As The New York Times writes in another article, "While Americans make up just over 4 percent of the world’s population, they are responsible for almost a third of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. China emits more carbon into the atmosphere today, but... the US has a long head start on burning coal, oil and natural gas. Some said it was a moral imperative for the US to stay in the Paris pact."

What does "withdrawing from deal signify"? Is it dead?

Far from it. In fact, the US announcement seems to have triggered a counter-reaction with world leaders pledging to continue with their commitment. Chinese premier Li Keqiang recently told German chancellor Angela Merkel that China will honour its commitment while Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his tête-à-tête with Merkel had described any action to renege on Paris Agreement as "morally criminal". The US, too, cannot exit the deal before November 2019 when it shall formally submit the proposal and then it must wait for one more year for its name to be deleted from the records. Anything can happen within that timeframe, including a new American President reversing the decision.

How will Trump's decision affect the deal?

The biggest casualty could be the Green Climate Fund. Obama's America had already disbursed a third of the $3 billion in the GCF as part of the deal which envisaged rich countries donating cash to poorer nations for them to come up to scratch with technological advancements and encourage more spending on cleaner fuels. For all of Trump's whining about the US having to pay more, though, it is not the sole contributor, neither is it the highest. According to The New York Times, Sweden, with a donation pledge of $581 million, is spending roughly $60 per person which is "six times the amount the United States is pledging per capita."

The absence of US leadership, however, will be keenly felt in areas of development of greener technology and global effort to tackle emissions.

Effects of US pulling out of Paris deal on India

India, with a massive population many of whom are denied even the basic services, has a more flexible deadline under the Paris Agreement. Still, the Modi government within a very short time has taken giant strides. As a blog in Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) points out, "By May this year, India has solar power generation capacity of 9 gigawatt, become the world’s fourth-largest producer of wind energy, and announced plans to cancel 14 gigawatt of coal plants — putting it on track to not only meet, but exceed its Paris climate deal targets."

It will be really easy for India to flout the Paris Agreement citing the US as the example — Australia seems already headed that way — and the Modi government has no legal or moral compulsions to stick to its target of cutting emissions by 30-35 percent compared to 2005 levels.

Moreover, as Trump has said voters in Pittsburgh elected him and not Paris, it can be argued that Modi need not pay heed to rich world's concerns about global warming when he has millions of poor to take care of who are denied even the basic necessities.

The prime minister, however, has shown that his commitment towards the environment is absolute. His resolve towards sticking to the spirit and letter of Paris Agreement has been admirable. Few would bet against him reneging on his promise. If anything, India gets a little more breathing space in honouring its commitment. Going by the way the Modi government is acting on a war footing on renewable and cleaner energy front, economies of scale may help India achieve the target even without the funds promised by the US.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Building suspense about America’s role in the world, President Donald Trump planned to announce Thursday whether the U.S. would stay in a global climate pact. The White House signaled a withdrawal was likely, but Trump has been known to change his mind at the last minute on such major decisions.

Withdrawing from the pact was one of Trump’s principal campaign pledges, but America’s allies have expressed alarm about the likely consequences of the U.S. abandoning the pact. Top White House aides were divided and Trump’s decision may not be entirely clear-cut. Aides were deliberating on “caveats in the language,” one official said.

Trump said Wednesday he was still listening to “a lot of people both ways.” The former reality TV star with a flair for drama later promoted his Rose Garden announcement in a tweet.

Everyone cautioned that no decision was final until Trump announced it. The president tends to seek counsel from both inside and outside advisers, many with differing agendas.

Abandoning the pact would isolate the U.S. from a raft of international allies who spent years negotiating the 2015 agreement to fight global warming and pollution by reducing carbon emissions in nearly 200 nations. While traveling abroad last week, Trump was repeatedly pressed to stay in the deal by European leaders and the pope. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world’s industrialized economies.

American corporate leaders have also appealed to the businessman-turned-president to stay in the pact. They include Apple, Google and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

In a Berlin speech, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that fighting climate change is a “global consensus” and an “international responsibility.”

“China in recent years has stayed true to its commitment,” said Li, speaking in Berlin Wednesday.

Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, enacted the deal without U.S. Senate ratification. A formal withdrawal would take years, experts say, a situation that led the president of the European Commission to speak dismissively of Trump on Wednesday.

Trump doesn’t “comprehensively understand” the terms of the accord, though European leaders tried to explain the process for withdrawing to him “in clear, simple sentences” during summit meetings last week, Jean-Claude Juncker said in Berlin. “It looks like that attempt failed,” Juncker said. “This notion, ‘I am Trump, I am American, America first and I am getting out,’ that is not going to happen.”

Some of Trump’s aides have been searching for a middle ground — perhaps by renegotiating the terms of the agreement — in an effort to thread the needle between his base of supporters who oppose the deal and those warning that a U.S. exit would deal a blow to the fight against global warming as well as to worldwide U.S. leadership.

That fight has played out within the Trump administration. Trump met Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has favored remaining in the agreement. Chief strategist Steve Bannon supports an exit, as does Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, has discussed the possibility of changing the U.S. carbon reduction targets instead of pulling out of the deal completely. Senior adviser Jared Kushner generally thinks the deal is bad but still would like to see if emissions targets can be changed.

Trump’s influential daughter Ivanka Trump’s preference is to stay, but she has made it a priority to establish a review process so her father would hear from all sides, said a senior administration official. Like the other officials, that person was not authorized to describe the private discussions by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Wednesday in Alaska that he had “yet to read what the actual Paris Agreement is,” and would have to read it before weighing in.

Scientists say Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming sooner if the U.S. retreats from its pledge because America contributes so much to rising temperatures. Calculations suggest withdrawal could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide in the air a year — enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucy, Michael Biesecker and Seth Borenstein in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump confirms that the United States will withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.