WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Rank, the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, has left the State Department over the Trump administration’s decision to quit the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

An official of China's Giant Panda Protection and Research Center introduces Dujiangyan Panda Base to David Rank (C), the charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, in Sichuan province, China March 24, 2017. Picture taken March 24, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed Rank’s departure, but said she was unable to verify Twitter posts that said he resigned as he felt unable to deliver a formal notification to China of the U.S. decision last week to quit the agreement.

“He has retired from the foreign service,” said Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the department’s East Asia Bureau. “Mr. Rank has made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department.”

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, President Donald Trump’s pick as the next U.S. ambassador to Beijing, is expected to take up the post later this month.

A tweet from China expert John Pomfret quoted unnamed sources as saying that Rank had resigned as he could not support Trump’s decision last week to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

Another tweet from Pomfret said Rank called a town hall meeting to announce his decision to embassy staff and explained that he could not deliver a diplomatic note informing the Chinese government of the U.S. decision.

A senior U.S. official confirmed the account given in the tweets but added that after Rank announced his intention to retire on Monday in Beijing, he was told by the State Department to leave his post immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

On June 1, the U.S. State Department accepted the resignation of its top personnel officer, who had been among its few remaining senior Obama administration political appointees, another U.S. official said.

Arnold Chacon had served as the director general of the foreign service and director of human resources.

The official said Chacon had tendered his resignation when Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, along with all presidential appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president and secretary of state.

The acceptance of Chacon’s resignation was first reported by the DiploPundit website.

It was not immediately clear whether he would be offered another post at the department.

Other than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his deputy John Sullivan and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, the third-ranking U.S. diplomat, most of the State Department’s senior posts are currently vacant or filled by acting officials.

Chacon could not immediately be reached for comment.

Contacted by Reuters for comment, Rank, a career foreign service officer who took over the post of deputy chief of mission in Beijing in January 2016, referred all questions to the U.S. embassy.

Jonathan Fritz, the embassy’s economics councilor, would serve as chargé in his place, Richey-Allen said.

FILE PHOTO: A paramilitary police officer guards the entrance to the U.S. embassy in Beijing April 30, 2012. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic/File Photo

Rank had been with the department for 27 years and served as the political councilor at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012.

Trump’s announcement on Thursday that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, saying it would undermine the U.S. economy and cost jobs, drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

“The world has paid attention to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing on Tuesday, but added that personnel changes were the United States’ “internal affairs”.</s>The coalition, calling itself “We are still in“, includes leaders from nine states, 125 cities, 902 businesses and investors, and 183 colleges and universities.

Yesterday, President Trump announced the USA is joining Syria and Nicaragua in abdicating from the landmark agreement, ratified by former President Obama in 2016 and signed by 195 nations. “It is time for all of us to stand up, organize, fight back, and channel our energy into grassroots political action”.

The accord is “irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement can not be renegotiated”, they said. The group will seek to pursue the climate goals established under the Paris accord, and in California’s case, excel beyond them. The Paris Agreement applies to both rich and poor countries, though it says the rich should take the lead in cutting emissions.

It’s official – on June 1, President Trump announced that “the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord“, but suggested that he would be open to new negotiations that are “fair” to the United States. “We are already halfway there and we can accelerate our process further even without any support from Washington”, Bloomberg said. “There is no way”.

“If the United States drops out of the climate agreement… for European trade policy, this means that American production sites don’t need to abide by the climate goals”, Germany’s center-left chancellor candidate said on Thursday, speaking at the WDR Europa Forum in Berlin. “Paris or no Paris, our commitment to preserving the climate is for the sake of future generations”, he said.

India is the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, the U.S. and the EU. Exploitation of nature is not acceptable to us.

NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Pruitt, “You’re the EPA administrator; shouldn’t you be able to tell the American people whether or not the president still believes that climate change is a hoax?“.

What does this move mean for the United States’ position in climate leadership and our relationship with other world powers?

USA cities, states and businesses can fulfil commitments made by the United States under the Paris climate change agreement even though the U.S. has withdrawn from the pact, former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg said in Paris.

“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States”, Trump said. “There is no way”, Macron said.

The pact is aimed at combating climate change around the world and helping nations adapt to its effects by requiring countries to present plans to reduce carbon emissions.</s>Not long after President Donald Trump announced today that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, Mayor Jim Kenney announced that Philly will continue to honor the historic agreement to lessen the country’s carbon footprint in an attempt to fight the global effects of climate change. They say that climate changes are natural, and they say that the Paris accord will slow economic growth and cause higher energy costs.

“At what point does America get demeaned?” he continued.

“Industry must now lead and not depend on government”, wrote Jeff Immelt, CEO of General electric, according to Fortune. Resistance to Trump’s move quickly bubbled up in statehouses, city halls, corporate boardrooms and homes across America.

Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists called Trump’s move “reprehensible”. Mayors of more than 85 cities across the U.S. signed a letter on Thursday announcing a commitment to reduce emissions and push clean energy.

The National Climate Change Secretariat said on Friday that Singapore will continue contributing to the global effort to address climate change.

President Donald Trump announced his intention for the United States to leave the Paris climate agreement on Thursday in a lengthy and rambling speech that veered into inaccurate territory several times. “We’re going to grow rapidly”, he said.

“The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States’ wealth to other countries”, Trump said. “You won the election with a manufacturing jobs agenda”.

Without mentioning the USA specifically, Li said that “China in recent years has stayed true to its commitment” and pointed out that his was one of the first countries to ratify the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Mr Trump said though that he was open to renegotiating the deal, or creating a new agreement, “on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers”.

In a memo to Apple employees Thursday afternoon, Cook expressed his disappointment with Trump’s decision to pull out of the global agreement. The accord calls for countries to revisit their individual pledges every five years, with the hope that nations will adopt stricter limits as the price of cleaner energy technology drops.

Trump’s claim that the Paris accord would achieve “tiny, tiny” temperature reductions was attributed to MIT.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Britain would continue to press the U.S.to reduce unsafe emissions even if Trump pulls out.

China overtook the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2007 but analysts see the USA withdrawal as an opportunity for China to burnish its image as a global leader.</s>“We don’t want other countries and other leaders to laugh at us anymore”. He will say the decision fulfills his promise to “put American workers first”, it said.

“I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh”, Trump said, “not Paris“.

Under the terms of the agreement, the earliest a nation can formally withdraw is November, 2020 – the same month Trump will run for re-election. “If we can that’s great, if we can’t that’s fine”. The UN body that facilitated the deal said it “cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single party”.

According to a March report in the Washington Post, Cook is working with the White House Office of American Innovation.

“When we talk about what a better deal looks like, that’s up to the President”, said one White House aide.

The EU climate action commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, said in a statement that the bloc “deeply regrets the unilateral decision by the Trump administration” but vowed “the world can continue to count on Europe for global leadership”. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal. The president claimed that meeting the accord’s greenhouse gas emission standards would cost the United States close to $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5 million industrial jobs. The Atlantic reported a year ago that a US departure would likely result in less transparent mechanisms for actually enforcing the Paris accord – because Chinese “faulty and unreliable energy statistics” could play a prominent role.

Trump administration officials lobbying the president to drop the deal have echoed a similar sentiment.

“The actions of the United States are bound to have a ripple effect in other emerging economies that are just getting serious about climate change, such as India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia”, Michael Oppenheimer told The New York Times.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., did not wait for Trump’s Rose Garden announcement to release a statement in which she slammed the president for “a stunning abdication of American leadership and a grave threat to our planet’s future”.

Inside the West Wing, attempts to sway Trump’s thinking also continued apace.

But Trump’s intentions concerning the Paris accord were unclear even to some of his aides until the last day or so, since he has shown flexibility on some campaign promises and had gotten an earful about the need to stay in the agreement from key allies at a Group of Seven summit last week in Sicily.

In pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, the United States joins only two other nations – Syria and Nicaragua – who have passed on the agreement. That means the USA would remain in the agreement, at least formally, for another three-and-a-half years, ensuring the issue remains alive in the next presidential election.

In the end, anti-Paris voices, led by chief strategist Steve Bannon and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, won out, and Trump’s remarks Thursday reflected the nationalist viewpoints espoused by Bannon and his cohorts.

China and the European Union will seek on Friday to save a global pact against climate change from which U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be set to withdraw. It’s easy to imagine the White House would lead the worldwide community into immediate action against any terrorist group – or any other sort of adversary – that did what fossil fuels do to the American people.

President Donald Trump will announce shortly that United States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement as one of the most ignorant and risky actions ever taken by any President”, Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russian Federation among the world’s industrialized economies.

Condemnations of Trump’s decision from environmental leaders as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill arrived quickly Thursday afternoon. China will be represented by Prime Minister Li Keqiang.

The Paris accord was reached in 2015, after lengthy negotiations. The U.S.is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon, following only China.</s>In practical terms, U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to formally withdraw from the Paris climate accord doesn’t much matter. Rather, it is a theatrical gesture that gives all actors in this drama a chance to strut their stuff. The accord itself is largely aspirational. According to the United Nations, even if all the pact’s signatories — including the U.S. — delivered on their Paris promises, the world would still face catastrophic climate change. In any case, it is not clear that signatories will deliver on their promises. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, for instance, is still distressingly vague about how it plans to meet its carbon reduction target, a target that Trudeau, when he was in opposition, used to deride as grossly inadequate. If Canada or any other signatory fails to meet its goal, there will be no penalty. There is no enforcement mechanism in the Paris pact. Trump understands this. Since he became president in January, he has been busy dismantling every policy that might have allowed the U.S. to meet its carbon reduction goals.

All of that was fine with the world. Under the deliberately loose wording of the Paris accord, he had every right to do so. Indeed, the real question is why Trump bothered to formally withdraw at all. He could have just as easily continued to sabotage the climate deal from within. The answer, it seems, is that this veteran showman wanted to make a point that would resonate with his audience.

Certainly, there is a great deal of theatre involved in all of this. Major nations, including Germany, Britain, China and Canada, continue to pledge fealty to Paris. Given the inherent weakness of the accord, that is easy to do. Given the global unpopularity of Trump, it is also politic. But it also allows these nations to portray themselves as being on the cutting edge of the new economy. Big business, including big energy, has belatedly come to realize that climate change provides major commercial opportunities. Chinese firms in particular hope to cash in on what they expect will be a worldwide craving for solar panels. America’s Tesla wants to save the planet by selling everyone an electric car. Even those who manufacture sandbags benefit from a world in which frequent flooding has become the norm. To the new corporate giants, like Facebook and Amazon — and even to some of the old ones, like Shell and IBM — Trump’s decision to abandon Paris was definitely uncool. Tesla founder Elon Musk responded to the move by quitting one of Trump’s advisory councils. In effect, he was saying: I can’t afford to be associated with such an old dinosaur. Still, the old dinosaur is far from toothless. Trudeau has said that Trump’s decisions won’t affect Canada’s unwavering commitment to fight climate change. In fact, they already have. In April 2016, Trudeau and then U.S. president Barack Obama jointly agreed to impose new restrictions on methane emissions from oil production. After his election, Trump scrapped the U.S. regulations. Under pressure from Canadian producers, Ottawa responded by announcing a three-year delay in its methane plans. Expect more pressure on government to backtrack as Canadian businesses respond to specific Trumpian climate-change rollbacks that put them at a competitive disadvantage in the U.S. market. This, however, will take place quietly, in the realm of reality. On the main stage, meanwhile, the morality play is set to continue. Evildoer Trump has tied Paris to the railroad track. The coal-fired train of climate change is bearing down. In the distance, the good guys — led by Canada, Europe and China — are riding to the rescue in self-driving, electric cars. Will they get there in time? Can they save the heroine? Or will the villainous Trump use old 20th century technology to shoot out their solar — powered battery packs?</s>David Rank, the acting US ambassador to China, resigned from his post in Beijing over President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, according to sources cited in multiple reports.

This story is developing and will continue to be updated.</s>President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday evening that he will announce his decision on whether the United States should leave the 2016 Paris Accord Thursday at the White House.

Trump will announce his decision on the Paris Agreement in the next few days.

Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax”, promised during his presidential campaign to pull the US out of the deal.

What’s not quite clear yet is whether Trump intends to pull out of the Paris agreement itself, or the entire treaty underlining all global climate change negotiations, called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

More on this as it develops.

China says it will work with the European Union to uphold the worldwide agreement on climate change even if the US pulls out.

Last week, more than 20 Republican senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a letter to Trump asking him to leave the Paris Climate Agreement.

Hundreds of United States companies, including Nike, Starbucks and Mars, also signed a joint letter warning Mr Trump a withdrawal would threaten “American prosperity”.

She’s criticizing what she says are “destructive and short-sighted” decisions by the Trump administration. The deal relies heavily on reductions in emissions by big polluter nations, and the United States is the world’s second-biggest carbon dioxide emitter behind China. While a shift of focus back onto fossil fuels will undoubtedly provide jobs growth in the short-term, whether the president believes in climate change or not, the future of energy is in renewables.

Some northern European countries are criticizing the USA for its expected withdrawal from the Paris climate accords.

In Denmark, climate minister Lars Christian Lilleholt said that “if true, this is a really, really bad signal from the United States”.

The European Union and China spell out their continued commitment to the deal in a draft joint statement, obtained by CNN, which is slated to be published Friday regardless of what Trump announces.

Musk indicated that he had been trying to persuade Trump to remain part of the climate agreement.

Under Obama, Washington had pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The organization’s main Twitter page quoted Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying, “Climate change is undeniable”.

A frustrated German Chancellor Angela Merkel later warned that Europe “must take its fate into its own hands”, citing the differences with Washington on climate change as evidence of their divergent paths. Tesla’s Elon Musk threatened to quit White House advisory councils if the president pulls out. His agency was responsible for numerous multilateral issues, including climate change and ozone depletion. The U.S., he said, is “well positioned to compete” with the agreement in place and staying in means “a seat at the negotiating table to ensure a level playing field”.

A spokesman for the American Petroleum Industry, which represents US oil and gas companies, said it had no position on the Paris agreement, but pointed out recent declines in USA carbon emissions to near 30-year lows – a trend driven by increased natural gas use replacing coal.</s>US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley has defended President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to withdraw from the landmark Paris accord but underlined that America was committed to curbing climate change. Trump last week withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement and said that India would get billions of dollars for meeting its commitment under the 2015 Paris Agreement along with China and gain a financial advantage over the US. He had put the US in league with two other nations -Syria and Nicaragua – who have not signed onto the deal agreed by over 190 other nations.

The decision has drawn a negative reaction from around the world with world leaders vowed to enhance their commitment to the landmark accord. “Just because the US got out of a club does not mean we are not going to care about the environment,” the Indian-American senior diplomat said on Saturday. Haley, 45, has defended Trump’s decision saying he knows climate is changing. Trump “knows that it is changing and that the US has to be responsible for it and that is what we are going to do,” Haley said, adding that withdrawing from the Paris agreement will not change the country’s commitment to curbing climate change, the CNN reported.

“President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of the equation,” Haley said. When asked why the US pulled out of the climate agreement, Haley blamed former President Barack Obama for agreeing to regulations that were “too onerous,” too strict and ultimately unachievable. Haley said the regulations from the Paris agreement were disadvantaging the companies.

“I knew that as a governor. The jobs were not attainable as long as we lived under those regulations. It was not possible to meet the goals had we attempted to,” she said. Haley’s comments are the closest acknowledgement by an administration official since Trump took office that the President — who has called climate change a “hoax” on multiple occasions — believes global warming is occurring and humanity has a role in it.

When asked in November if he believed human activity was connected to climate change, Trump acknowledged that there is “some connectivity.” But he backed away from saying to what extent he believed humans were responsible, adding that it “also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” Haley said that Trump will always have America’s best interests at heart, including what he does in regard to protecting the environment.

“The rest of the world wanted to tell us how to do it. But we will do it under our own terms,” she said.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App</s>In his first tweet, Blankfein wrote: “Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the US’s leadership position in the world”.

A top European Union official says the EU and China believe that President Donald Trump made a mistake by pulling the United States out of a landmark global climate agreement.

However, Mrs May came under fire for not adding her name to a joint statement issued by the leaders of France, Germany and Italy to say that the Paris climate accord can not be renegotiated as President Trump has demanded.

At their short summit, the European Union and China – two of the world’s major polluters – are set to issue a statement reaffirming their stance on global warming following Trump’s announcement Thursday. “So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement”.

But he said that the poorest nations, from Afghanistan to Zambia, had no plans to quit the Paris Agreement.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asserted on Friday that climate change is “undeniable” as he strongly urged all governments across the world to “stay the course” and remain committed to implementing the ambitious deal.

Other world leaders have reacted with anger and defiance after President Trump announced that the United States, the world’s second biggest carbon emitter, was quitting the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “On the contrary. We in Germany, Europe and the world will combine our forces more resolutely than ever to address and successfully tackle challenges for humanity such as climate change”.

“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more“.

He added that Trump’s decision to give up on the climate change accord was a political, rather than an economic one. State Department data for 2015 say that the United States provided $2.6 billion in public funds towards climate finance.

“We think the Paris Accord reflects the widest agreement of the worldwide community with regards to climate change, and parties should cherish this hard-won outcome”, Hua Chunying, ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson said at the regular ministry briefing on Friday.

It appears, he says, that the White House cherry picked the lowest number they could find among studies that explored the impact of the climate accord. On Friday, a host of USA states, cities, and companies vowed to live up to the terms of the deal.

“The relevant MIT researchers believe that the Paris agreement is an unprecedented and vital effort by almost 200 countries to respond to the urgent threat of global climate change”, MIT said in a statement Thursday evening.

But now it seems that Trump’s decisions have gone too far against the Disney CEO’s principles. “There is no backsliding on the Paris Agreement”, Juncker told the conference before a meeting with Li and European Council chief Donald Tusk.</s>Trump railed against how “many [countries] will never pay one dime”, but many countries will never poison the planet as much as we have, either. “We are convinced that yesterday’s decision is a big mistake”. “This requires our efforts to resolve existing issues”.

According to excerpts of that letter, Cook reportedly told employees that the responsibility to fight climate change belongs to everyone. For years, Trump has been calling global warming a hoax, sometimes alleging that it was invented by China.

I know many of you share my disappointment with the White House’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

A decision by President Trump to pull the United States out of the world’s first comprehensive agreement on tackling climate change and seek renegotiated terms “fair” to America has drawn widespread global condemnation. Vox combed through Trump’s Twitter account -seemingly his preferred method of communication - and found 115 tweets that expressed some level of climate skepticism.

The Paris Agreement, which went into effect November 4, 2016, and now has 147 signatories, would have big impacts on global temperatures, climate scientists have said.

Part of U.S. president Donald Trump’s justification for pulling the country out of the global Paris climate agreement yesterdaywas that the deal wouldn’t reduce temperatures enough to make an impact.

But the Paris agreement is not as polarising as other climate change issues, and a recent poll by Yale University found that nearly half of Mr Trump’s supporters think the U.S. should take part in the agreement. But Kiene urged leaders to translate their words into actions.

Hendricks said the absence of $500 million contributions from the United States to the Green Climate Fund will be felt from 2018, but suggested the gap could be filled with “other financing mechanisms, for example through the World Bank”. We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The steel mills and other factories that once made Pittsburgh look like “hell with the lid taken off” all but disappeared over the past generation, and the city has become known as a hub for technology, higher education, energy and health care. A letter on behalf of Apple, Google, Unilever and more, outlined the reasons why the USA must remain committed to the climate agreement, arguing it will strengthen competitiveness, create jobs, and reduce business risks.

Dozens of cities have said they are committed to the Paris climate accord, with at least 86 mayors signing a statement saying they will adopt and uphold the agreement’s goals.

Why is the USA paying other countries to reduce their emissions? Bill Peduto, the Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh, a city that symbolises the rise and fall of the USA coal and steel industries, said the city would proceed with plans made as Paris commitments.

On Thursday, he released a video in English as well as French in which he criticized Trump for pulling out of the Paris accord and coined the “Make our planet great again” slogan.
The chargé d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, resigns following President Donald Trump's announcement he will withdraw the United States from the 2015 international Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.