Trump takes formal step to pull out of Paris climate agreement

The Trump administration notified the United Nations on Monday that it will formally withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, marking the first step in a one-year process to exit the global pact to fight climate change.

The move would leave the US as the only country outside the accord, a decision President Trump promised early in his term to unfetter America’s domestic oil, gas and coal industries.

“What we won’t do is punish the American people while enriching foreign polluters,” Trump said at a shale gas industry conference in Pennsylvania on Oct. 23, referring to his planned withdrawal from the agreement.

The US had signed onto the 2015 pact during the Obama administration, promising a 26-28 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 from 2005 levels.

Trump campaigned on a promise to rescind that pledge, saying it would unfairly hurt the US economy while leaving other big polluters like China to increase emissions, but he was bound by UN rules to wait until Monday to file the exit papers.

Climate change, he asserted, was a “hoax” cooked up by the Chinese to damage the US.