President Donald Trump has stoutly defended his decision to pull America out of the landmark Paris climate accord by complaining that the deal allows other large nations such as India and China to grow, but not the United States.
“We knocked out the Paris Climate Accord. Would have been a disaster. Would have been a disaster for our country,” Trump thundered, amid chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from a friendly audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) here on Friday.
The deal, he said, not only curbs America’s ability to use its massive energy sources but also makes it uncompetitive. In the case of China, its provisions kicked in only by 2030, whereas for America, it kicked in immediately, he said. He also complained that the US, under the deal, was required to pay developing countries like India.
“Other countries, big countries — India and others — we had to pay, because they considered them a growing country,” he said, adding: “What are weIJ Are we allowed to grow tooIJ …They called India a developing nation.
They called China a developing nation. But the United States, we’re developed – we can pay.”
Dubbing the 2015 Paris deal a “self-inflicted major economic wound” embraced by the predecessor Barack Obama, Trump had announced last June that the US would pull out of the agreement on the grounds that it hamstrings the American economy and hurt American workers. “The bottom line is that the Paris agreement is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States,” he said at the time.
At the Friday event, Trump touted his withdrawal from the “totally disastrous, job-killing” Paris deal as one of the successes of his first year in office that has resulted in ending the war on American energy.
“We were in war. And we’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” he said, adding: “And remember this: Virtually, as soon as I got into office, we approved the Keystone Xl pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline, which would never have been approved.”
“The country knows what I’m doing,” he said in defence of his controversial decision, adding: “We couldn’t build. We couldn't farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmentals. I mean, it’s crazy. It’s crazy.”