Environmental Protection Agency’s head, Scott Pruitt, indicates that President Trump will soon make a decision on whether to pull out of the global Paris Climate Agreement, using business terminology famously used by his boss.
In an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Varney & Co., the EPA administrator called the Paris Agreement “a bad deal for this country.”“What Paris represents is an American second strategy. We already are at pre-1994 levels with respect to our CO2 footprint and when America went to Paris, Russia, China, India, all contributed zero to the climate action fund. And as far as India and China are concerned, they didn’t have to take any steps to address CO2 until year 2030. That’s a bad business deal for this country,” he said.Pruitt said the United States has been leading the world at reducing our CO2 footprint through innovation and technology without any government mandate.“When you look at what’s happened, you have technology and innovation, invested by the private sector, reducing our CO2 footprint. So, we need to tell our story. We don’t need to be apologetic about our position and we need to exit Paris,” he said.
However, Axios contributor Jonathon Swan is reporting that the First Daughter will shortly meet with Pruitt to try and persuade him of the merits of the international climate deal agreed to by former president Obama. She will be joined by the Alaskan Senator who once had organize a write-in campaign to save her seat after losing the 2010 Republican primary to a Tea Party challenger.
The president’s daughter, who serves as a senior White House advisor, is passionate about combating global warming and turned heads when she brought climate activist Al Gore to Trump Tower during the presidential transition.Sources inside the White House say the president’s inclination has been to pull out, but Ivanka has set up a process to go through the decision and ensure he hears all the facts before making his decision.White House sources say she wants the U.S. to remain in the Paris accord, but that her main objective is to ensure the president has all the information he needs to make his decision. Trump has previously promised to get the U.S. out of Obama’s Paris deal, but he’s more recently indicated that he’s listening to all perspectives. No decisions have been made, and both Jared and Ivanka want the president to have full visibility of all the downsides of exiting this international agreement.Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is expected to join the 9:30am meeting on Tuesday.
In addition to a family member and a certified member of the Washington D.C. swamp lobbying Pruitt, Great Britain’s Theresa May is facing calls from Britain’s leading environment and development groups to use her influence to persuade President Trump not to #ClimExit.
In a strongly worded letter, the heads of Oxfam, the RSPB, Greenpeace, WWF, Christian Aid, Cafod and other groups have called on the prime minister to “pick up the phone” to the US president to warn him of the consequences of leaving the Paris accord, something Trump pledged to do within 100 days of coming to power, a timeline that passed last week.
While I am concerned that the triumvirate of powerful women may prove persuasive in halting this much-needed exit from international climate nonsense, I am not prepared to panic. I have observed in these past 100-plus days that gutting Obama’s America-harming programs is one of Trump’s most cherished goals.
The motivation is probably complex, but I imagine it is an amalgam of love-of-country and a complete disdain for Obama.
Neither of these factors is likely to disappear in the next week, either.
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