Bloomberg: Trump Cedes Climate Leadership to China

According to Bloomberg, President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the Paris accord has just handed China’s President Xi Jinping a golden opportunity to burnish his country’s image as a clean-energy innovator and global leader in the drive to avoid possible future catastrophic climate change. Trump’s move to pull the US out of the almost 200-nation deal, which risks undermining the commitment of other countries to limit fossil-fuel emissions, has drawn sharp criticism from key American allies across Europe and Asia. But Trump, in a speech Thursday at the White House, said the accord undermined US interests, sent taxpayer money abroad and didn’t require enough from other nations, singling out China and India. With the decision, the US is now deeply isolated on climate change policy. It joins Syria and Nicaragua outside the Paris consensus, which includes governments as divergent as Saudi Arabia and North Korea.