White House says Trump to withdraw US from Paris climate accord

WASHINGTON -- The White House said Monday that Donald Trump, who was inaugurated as the 47th US president, will pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.

"President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord," the White House said in a statement.

The move, expected in an executive order Trump will sign later in the day, is part of the president's effort to "MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AND ENERGY DOMINANT AGAIN," read the statement.

Long considering clean energy expensive and wasteful, Trump during his inauguration speech vowed to redouble the effort to extract and utilize fossil fuels. "I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill," he said.

"We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth," Trump claimed. "And we are going to use it."

An international endeavor to tackle human-caused global warming and related crisis, the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, and the United States led by then President Barack Obama formally entered the Paris Agreement in September 2016.

The first Trump administration officially let the United States, one of the world's top emitters of green house gases, exit the Paris climate accord in November 2020, dealing a major blow to international efforts combating the climate crisis.

The upcoming executive order by Trump will mark another round of back-and-forth move regarding US commitment to dealing with climate change on the global stage.

Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump to become the 46th US president in 2021, signed an executive order on Jan. 20, 2021 — his first day in office — to bring the United States back into the Paris climate accord.