A former adviser for President Donald Trump says he'll definitely pull out of the landmark Paris climate change agreement, noting an executive order on the measure could come soon.
Myron Ebell, who was in charge of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, told The Independent that he will reverse policies signed by former President Barack Obama to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“He could do it by executive order tomorrow,” he told the newspaper, “or he could wait and do it as part of a larger package. There are multiple ways and I have no idea of the timing.”
Ebell worked for Trump until his Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony. He’s a noted climate change skeptic.
“I expect Donald Trump to be very assiduous in keeping his promises, despite all of the flack he is going to get from his opponents,” he said in London.
The United Nations-backed Paris Agreement dealt with lowering emissions starting in the year 2020. Of the 194 member U.N. states that have signed the agreement, 127 have ratified it. Under the accord, it says it aims to “[hold] the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
Trump, who previously said climate change is a hoax, later gave an answer with a more conciliatory tone to the New York Times after he was elected president. “I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much,” Trump told the newspaper. “It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change.”
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