India, China benefitted from Paris Climate deal, US did not: Trump
26 February, 2018
In June 2017, President Trump had announced to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal.
Washington: US President Donald Trump has once again named India and China to defend his policy on climate change and reiterated that these countries and some others benefited the most from the Paris agreement while America didn't get any advantage.
"We knocked out the Paris Climate Accord. It would have been a disaster. Would have been a disaster for our country," President Trump said in his address today to the Conservative Political Action Committee.
He was referring to his decision in 2017 to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In June 2017, President Trump had announced to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries during the previous Obama administration.
Arguing that countries like China and India are benefiting the most from the Paris Agreement, President Trump had said that the agreement on climate change was unfair to the US, as it badly hit its businesses and jobs.
Defending his decision President Trump said, "You know, basically, it said, 'you have a lot of oil and gas that we found' -- you know, technology has been amazing. And we found things that we never knew. But we have massive -- just about the top in the world -- we have massive energy reserves. We have coal. We have so much."
"And basically, they were saying, don't use it. You can't use it. So what it does is it makes us uncompetitive with other countries. It's not going to happen, I told them. It's not going to happen," he added.
"And China -- their agreement didn't kick in until 2030. Right? Our agreement kicks in immediately. Russia -- they're allowed to go back into the 1990s, which was not a clean environmental time," President Trump said.
Commenting on India and other countries, he said, "Other countries, big countries -- India and others -- we had to pay, because they considered them a growing country.
"They were a growing country. I said, What are we? Are we allowed to grow, too? Ok? No, Are we allowed to grow?," he said.
"They called India a developing nation. They call China a developing nation. But the United States? We're developed. We can pay," President Trump said.
The President asked, if people understood about the Paris Accord and said that his country is in favour of his decision.
"Because it sounds so good. It's like some of the environmental regulations that I cut. They have the most beautiful titles. And sometimes, I'd say, look, I'm just going to close my eyes and sign this, because you know what? I'm going to get killed on this one. And I get so much thanks. The country knows what I'm doing," he said.
"We couldn't build. We couldn't farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmental. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy," President Trump said.