French President Emmanuel Macron, following a meeting with US President Donald Trump, asserted in a Sunday report by Le Journal du Dimanche that the American leader may walk back a previous declaration to withdraw his country from the historic 2015 Paris accord.
In asserting that Trump would go back on his earlier pledge to withdraw the US from the climate change agreement — a move decried globally — Macron stated that the US president "told me that he would try to find a solution in the coming months."
The newly elected French president, in describing his Paris meeting with Trump last week — part of a state visit honoring France's Bastille Day — stated, "We spoke in detail about the things that could make him come back to the Paris accord."
Trump and his advisors have described the historic 2015 climate change mitigation agreement — a cornerstone of the foreign policy legacy of former US President Barack Obama — as weak, particularly with regard to providing incentives to polluters in India and China to lower emissions, while concurrently being too hard on US industry.
On Friday, the US president and his administration appeared to be softening their tone with regard to the accord, suggesting that modified terms to the deal that favor US industry could see Washington rejoin the rest of the world in support of the treaty, Reuters reports.
The unprecedented Paris Climate Accord was adopted on December 12, 2015, by 196 parties around the world. It seeks to curb global warming to a maximum of two degrees by 2100 by instigating pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other emissions created through the burning of fossil fuels.
