CLIMATE CONTROL/ENERGY/FOREIGN POLICY/POLITICS: “Leaders from around the world maintained a defiant front on Thursday [6-1-17] after President Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, speaking in French before switching to English, said he believed Mr. Trump was making a mistake. He then extended an offer to Americans:
‘Tonight, I wish to tell the United States: France believes in you, the world believes in you. I know that you are a great nation. I know your history, our common history. To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the president of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second home.’
‘I can assure you,’ Mr. Macron added, ‘France will not give up the fight.’ He capped off his English remarks with a twist on Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan: ‘Make our planet great again.’
China made it a point to say it would stay in the accord, while Mr. Macron and the leaders of Germany and Italy issued a joint statement expressing ‘regret’ and rejecting Mr. Trump’s assertion that he would renegotiate the deal…
Mr. Trump, in a Rose Garden address, said he wanted better terms for the United States. ‘We are getting out,’ he said. ‘But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great.’
But Christiana Figueres, the former United Nations official who led the negotiations, said his remarks underscored a lack of understanding of how international agreements work. Under the accord, the United States cannot even submit its intention to withdraw until November 2019, after which the process would take a year.”
-Somini Sengupta, Melissa Eddy, Chris Bucky, and Alissa J. Rubin, “As Trump Exits Paris Agreement, Other Nations Are Defiant,” The New York Times online, June 1, 2017