MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd November, 2020) The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change was designed to kill the economy of the United States, not save the global environment, US President Donald Trump told the online G20 summit on Sunday.
In 2017, Trump announced that Washington would cease all participation in the Paris Accord, and the country officially withdrew from the deal in early November.
"To protect American workers, I withdrew the United States from the unfair and one-sided Paris Climate Accord, a very unfair act for the United States. The Paris Accord was not designed to save the environment. It was designed to kill the American economy. I refuse to surrender millions of American jobs and sent trillions of American Dollars to the world's worst polluters and environmental offenders - and that's what would have happened," Trump said in a pre-recorded message at the G20 summit's side event on safeguarding the planet.
The incumbent US leader also said that Washington made progress on environmental issues under his administration. In particular, Trump mentioned that the US invested more than $38 billion in water infrastructure.
"Since withdrawing from the Paris Accord, the United States has reduced carbon emissions more than any nation anywhere in the world. Our air is 7 percent cleaner than when I took office," Trump added.
Projected US President-elect Joe Biden has announced his intention to return to the Paris agreement.
