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Trump had given a one-year notice to abandon the Paris agreement on November 4, 2019. (Archive)
Riyadh:
US President Trump on Sunday defended his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, calling it “unfair and one-sided,” even as President-elect Joe Biden vowed to rejoin the historic accord.
The United States formally abandoned the 2015 Paris agreement earlier this month, becoming the first country to withdraw from an international pact on climate change.
“I withdrew the United States from the unjust and unilateral Paris Climate Agreement, a very unfair act for the United States,” Trump said on the sidelines of a virtual G20 summit hosted by Saudi Arabia.
“The Paris agreement was not designed to save the environment. It was designed to kill the American economy.
“I refuse to give up millions of American jobs and send trillions of dollars to the world’s worst polluters and environmental violators, and that’s what would have happened.”
Trump has aggressively defended the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change and weakened other environmental protections.
Trump, who has refused to admit the bitter US elections, had given a one-year notice to abandon the Paris accord on November 4, 2019.
Biden has promised that the United States would rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in the White House in January, a move welcomed by European leaders.
The US president-elect has proposed a $ 1.7 trillion plan to take the United States, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, to net zero by 2050.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
