Trump facing pressure from allies to stay in Paris climate agreement
President-elect Donald Trump is facing mounting pressure from allies to stay in the Paris Agreement.
The Paris climate agreement, adopted in 2015 and signed in 2016 by nearly all countries on Earth, is a large-scale effort to reduce carbon emissions to halt global warming. Trump derided the agreement as a rip-off from the start, withdrawing from it in 2020. President Joe Biden rejoined the agreement in 2021. In June, the Trump campaign signaled it would leave the agreement again if Trump won the election.
However, the president-elect is now being urged by allies not to leave the agreement.
“The more people that will remain … is better,” Israel’s special envoy for climate change and sustainability, Gideon Behar, said when asked if Israel supported Trump’s plans to leave the agreement. He added that efforts to curtail global warming are “an international effort.”
His remarks came during the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan, which garnered controversy due to Azerbaijan’s oil industry and war with Armenia.
Trump has repeatedly prided himself on his support of Israel, making the country’s stance likely to carry more weight.
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods, also speaking at the talks, urged Trump not to leave the agreement earlier this week.
“We need a global system for managing global emissions,” he said in an interview with the New York Times in Baku. “Trump and his administration have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.”
“The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly,” Woods added.
The call surprised some, as Trump’s reenergizing of the fossil fuel industry is likely to benefit him significantly.
Despite this, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump had a mandate to follow through on his pledge to withdraw from the agreement.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” she said in a statement. “He will deliver.”
