US begins formal withdrawal from Paris climate accord

Donald Trump

Washington: The Trump administration has officially begun the process of withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday.

"Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The US is proud of our record as a world leader in reducing all emissions, fostering resilience, growing our economy, and ensuring energy for our citizens. Ours is a realistic and pragmatic model," Pompeo tweeted.

The United Nations has also confirmed that it has received an official notification by the United States outlining its intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement within a year.

"We have received it, we can confirm it," UN spokesman Farhan Haq told Sputnik on Monday when asked whether the United States has sent a notice to the United Nations of its intent to withdraw from the accord.

The Paris Climate Accord was adopted on December 12, 2015, by 196 parties around the world. It seeks to curb global warming to a maximum of two degrees by 2100 by instigating pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other emissions created through the burning of fossil fuels.

Under the Paris Agreement, each country determines, plans and regularly reports its own contribution it should make in order to mitigate global warming. There is no mechanism to force a country to set a specific target by a specific date, but each target should go beyond previously set targets.

US President Donald Trump and his advisors have described the historic 2015 climate change mitigation agreement - a cornerstone of the foreign policy legacy of former US President Barack Obama - as weak, particularly with regard to providing incentives to polluters in India and China to lower emissions, while concurrently being too hard on US industry.

Arguing that the 2015 agreement was detrimental to the US economy, Trump in 2017 had said: "In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but being negotiations to reenter, either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction under terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers , its people , its taxpayers," "We're getting out."

After Trump announced the US' departure from the Paris Accord on June 1, French President Emmanuel Macron said President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord was "a mistake both for the US and for our planet."

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