Donald Trump is keeping an open mind about the nation’s involvement in international climate change accords, according to New York Times reporters live tweeting an interview with the president-elect Tuesday. “Tom Friedman asks if Trump will withdraw from climate change accords. Trump: ‘I’m looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it,’” Times reporter Mike Grynbaum tweeted.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to “cancel” the Paris Agreement on climate change. That got a bit more difficult for him on Nov. 4 with the entry into force of the agreement, which puts into place a legal framework under which nations are to pursue domestically determined efforts to address climate change. The agreement includes a process by which nations can pull out, but it takes four years.
In light of the four-year lag period, Trump has reportedly begun looking into other options to get out of the agreement, including pulling out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the environmental treaty under which the agreement was struck. The ratification of the UNFCCC was approved by the United States Senate 98-0 during the George H.W. Bush administration in 1992.
Trump has made numerous statements in the past denying the science of climate change, most notably stating that it is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, an accusation the Chinese have denied. However, during the Times interview, the president-elect was singing a different tune. “Does Trump think human activity is linked to climate change? ‘I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much,’” Grynbaum tweeted.
Trump also said that “clean air is vitally important,” but he “is also thinking about ‘how much it will cost our companies’ & the effect on American competitiveness,” according to Grynbaum’s tweets.