Energy Secretary Rick Perry became the latest senior member of President Donald Trump’s administration to publicly advocate for staying in the Paris climate accord, saying the US should renegotiate the deal and push European nations to take on a larger share of emissions reductions.
“I’m not going to tell the president of the United States to walk away from the Paris accord,” Perry said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York on 25 April. “I will say that we need to renegotiate it.”
The remark puts Perry among a small group of Trump advisers who favor sticking with the landmark United Nations agreement, which the president vowed to scrap during his campaign. The debate has largely played out behind closed doors, with environmental chief Scott Pruitt and top strategist Steve Bannon pushing for a pullout while White House adviser Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson advocate sticking with the deal.
The White House has said it will decide by next month what to do with the deal involving more than 190 nations struck in the French capital in 2015. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman joined a group of 14 state attorneys in urging Trump to reconfirm US involvement in the Paris deal, saying fighting pollution is a public health matter.