Most of US economy backs Paris pact: Anti-Trump group
US cities, states and businesses accounting for more than half the country’s economy remain committed to the 2015 Paris climate accord despite President Donald Trump’s plan to pull out, an anti-Trump alliance said on Saturday.
The “America’s Pledge” report, presented on the sidelines of 200-nation talks on global warming in Bonn, Germany, said non-federal US backers of the Paris pact accounted for $10.1 trillion or 54 percent of US 2016 gross domestic product.
“The group ... represents a bigger economy than any nation outside the US and China,” said former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading opponent of Trump’s decision in June to withdraw from the agreement and to promote US coal and oil.
No other nation has followed Trump’s lead.
The report, led by Bloomberg and California Governor Jerry Brown, said it was the first to assess the extent of non-federal support for climate action by US cities, businesses and states.
The Paris agreement seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century with a radical shift to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power to curb heat waves, downpours, floods and rising sea levels.
“California strongly supports the United Nations’ unstoppable move to decarbonize the world economy,” Brown said.
Backing the Paris Agreement meant rallying around a target set by former President Barack Obama to cut US emissions by between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, the report said.
It also said 20 US states, 110 US cities and more than 1,400 businesses with US operations representing $25 trillion in market capitalization had already set quantified targets to cut emissions.
Together they accounted for 900 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, it said.
(Source: Reuters)
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