By Michael Bastasch / @MikeBastasch /
Former Vice President Al Gore personally asked President Donald Trump not to withdraw the U.S. from a United Nations agreement aimed at limiting global warming, a source revealed.
Gore called Trump Tuesday morning to discuss the Paris Agreement that the Obama administration joined in 2016, the source told Axios. “Mr. Gore made the case for why the U.S. should stay in the agreement and meet our commitments,” a source close to Gore said.
Gore praised the Paris Agreement when it was first announced in 2015, calling it “a bold and historic agreement.”
The agreement requires countries to voluntarily submit plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and those plans are supposed to be ratcheted up every five years. White House officials are split on whether or not the U.S. should remain in the agreement. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner favor staying, while chief strategist Steve Bannon favors keeping the president’s pledge to withdraw.
Ivanka Trump and Kushner have been backed by State Department career staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Multinational corporations from Starbucks to Exxon Mobil Corp. favor staying in Paris as well. Some Republicans have argued the U.S. can stay in the Paris Agreement with a weakened pledge to cut emissions. That argument has been supported by former Obama administration climate diplomats who have an interest in not seeing their work thrown out.
