President Donald Trump was noncommittal on the United States’ stance on the Paris Agreement on climate change Thursday, saying it would “be OK” if the U.S. never re-committed to the worldwide effort to combat global warming.
“Something could happen with respect to the Paris Accord, we’ll see what happens,” he said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron. “But we will talk about that over the coming period of time. And if it happens, that will be wonderful. And if it doesn’t, that’ll be OK, too. But we’ll see what happens.”
Macron was harshly critical, as were many world leaders, of Trump’s announcement on June 1 that he did not intend to honor the United States’ commitments as part of the climate deal, in which nations set individual emissions goals that are voluntarily enforced.
The same day of Trump’s announcement, Macron appealed to American climate scientists and others concerned about global warming to move to France, delivering a speech and launching a website calling to “make our planet great again,” a sly reference to Trump’s campaign theme, Make America Great Again.
