CLIMATE CHANGE/SYRIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Then there was one.
Syria announced during United Nations climate talks on Tuesday [11-7-17] that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.
According to several people who were in a plenary session at the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, a Syrian delegate announced that the country was poised to send its ratification of the Paris agreement to the United Nations…
A White House spokeswoman, Kelly Love, pointed reporters to a statement the administration made when Nicaragua joined the pact, noting there had been no change in the United States’ position…
President Trump announced in a Rose Garden speech this summer that the United States would quit the deal, calling it bad for America’s economy.
The Paris agreement, struck in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, calls on nearly 200 countries to voluntarily curb greenhouse gas emissions. At the time, only Nicaragua and Syria did not join, for very different reasons…
It is not clear what has changed, and the Syrian delegate who spoke Tuesday did not offer an explanation for the government’s decision.”
-Lisa Friedman, “Syria Joins Paris Climate Accord, Leaving Only U.S. Opposed,” The New York Times online, Nov. 7, 2017