By Shamce Ahmad |Staff Writer|
President Donald Trump and the Office of the White House announced that they will be withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on June 1.
The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that deals with greenhouse gas emission reductions, adaptation and finance towards climate healthy changes starting in the year 2020.
The decision to withdraw from the agreement was largely due to the notion that the carbon reduction targets set by the previous administration were severely hurting the economic climate and job forecasts.
Trump said the deal placed “draconian” financial burdens on the American people.
In his statement at the announcement, Trump mentioned that he was open to re-brokering US carbon reduction commitments, but cast doubt on the ability of other nationxs to agree to a plan that he deems fair to the United States.
“We’re getting out,” he said. “And we will start to renegotiate and we’ll see if there’s a better deal. If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”
Paul pointed out that the agreement tasks the United States with reducing its carbon footprint by 20 percent while China is under no environmental obligation for the next 20 years. “It’s just not fair,” he concluded.
The move to pull out of the Paris Agreement will be a prolonged one, as the process to fully be removed will take about four years, and will complete in the same month of the next presidential election, November of 2020.
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