World Leaders have expressed outrage and condemnation for United States President Donald Trump’s decision to pull his country out of the Paris Climate Change Deal reached last November.
The Chancellor of German Angela Merkel, newly elected President of France Emanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni released a joint statement in which they pledged to implement the Paris climate agreement despite the withdrawal of the US.
The three leaders, who, plus the China now seem destined to take over leadership of global affairs role that is being relinquished by the US, also asserted that the US will not be allowed to unilaterally renegotiate the 2015 agreement as Trump had indicated.
The United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) dismissed Trump’s claims that it could offer the US the opportunity to renegotiate the deal on the basis of a single country’s request.
Macron threw one of popular slogans back at him saying: “Make our planet great again.”
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius denounced Trump’s decision as the epitome of arrogance: “He says well, I don’t agree, so therefore everybody has to negotiate again.”
Speaking in Berlin on Friday, Merkel added that Trump’s decision was “very regrettable,” but urged like—minded persons to push ahead.
“The Paris agreement is one of the fundamental columns of the working together of world communities,” she said. “To everyone for whom the future of our planet is important, I say let’s continue going down this path so we’re successful for our Mother Earth.”
The scientific community ridiculed Trump’s decision as the climax of ignorance about the basic scientific fact that the earth shares one atmosphere and therefore has no borders when he pronounced that: “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”
Even at home, business leaders together with governors and mayors of some major US cities including Pittsburgh, decried Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal.
Many in the US actually believe that the US stands to lose jobs, and exports in the long run by losing its leadership role to innovate and produce clean energy technologies.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the Director of the renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, expressed defiance when he said in a statement that: “It will not substantially hamper global climate progress if the USA quit the Paris Agreement, but it will hurt the American economy and society alike.
Schellnhuber, a member of the Advisory Council on Global Change for the German government, and chair of the High Level Panel on Decarbonisation Pathways for the European Commission further observed that Trump’s decision to walk away from the agreement demonstrates Trump’s failure to recognise that Climate wars are over and have been replaced by the race for sustainability.
Schellnbuber, like many other leaders vowed that Europe and China are ready to take up the US’s leadership role.
“China and Europe have become world leaders on the path towards green development already and will strengthen their position if the US slips back at the national level,” said Schellnhuber.
Trump’s decision also vindicated German Chancellor Merkel who recently stated that the US and UK are no longer reliable partners.
Speaking to reporters Munich during a campaign tour last Sunday, Merkel said that Europe can no longer count on the U.S. and the U.K. as reliable allies.
“We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands,” Merkel said, while also stressing the importance of maintaining friendly relations with the two nations, as well as other countries, “even with Russia.”
“But we have to know that we must fight for our future, on our own, for our destiny as Europeans — and that’s what I want to do together with you,” she added.
