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U.S. would suffer ‘a diplomatic black eye’ – Obama’s climate envoy warns Trump against scrapping Paris UN climate deal

President Obama’s special envoy for climate change has warned Republican presidential hopefuls including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that any attempt to scrap the Paris climate agreement would lead to a “diplomatic black eye” for the US.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Todd Stern also said that a recent supreme court decision to block Barack Obama’s clean power plan would not affect US climate pledges, or plans to formally sign up to the Paris agreement later this year.

Republican candidates such as Trump or Cruz who query climate science on the presidential stump would in practice be “very loathe” to set off the storm that would follow any ditching of the Paris accord, Stern argued.

“Paris as an agreement has such broad acceptance and support around the world from countries of every stripe and region and Paris itself was seen as such a landmark – hard-fought, hard-won – deal that for the US to turn around and say ‘we are withdrawing from Paris’ would inevitably give the country a diplomatic black eye,” he said.

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