President Trump announced
the withdrawal of the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement,
an extraordinary move that dismayed America’s allies and set back the global
effort to address the warming planet.
Trump’s decision set off
alarms worldwide, drawing swift and sharp condemnation from foreign leaders as
well as top environmentalists and corporate titans, who decried the U.S. exit
from the Paris accord as an irresponsible abdication of American leadership in
the face of irrefutable scientific evidence.
Trump, who has labeled
climate change a “hoax,” made good on a campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris
agreement and Obama-era regulations that he said were decimating industries and
killing jobs. The president cast his decision as a “reassertion of America’s
sovereignty,” arguing that the climate pact as negotiated under President
Barack Obama was grossly unfair to the U.S. workers he had vowed to protect
with his populist “America First” platform.
