The Trump administration has changed its mind and will not pull out of the Paris Agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. Europe’s top climate and energy official, Arias Cañete, told the Journal Trump administration officials stated the policy shift during a 30-nation, minister-level meeting in Montreal Saturday and that instead of withdrawing from the 2016 accord, the White House said it would reengage with the global pact aimed at combating climate change. “The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete told the Journal.
In June, President Trump announced from the Rose Garden his intention to withdraw from the global agreement, joining a Syria and Nicaragua as holdouts, and offering that the U.S. would be willing to rejoin the accord under renegotiated terms. The move was cheered by much of the Republican Party and condemned by nearly everyone else in the entire world. It will be interesting to see how the White House explains its evolving position to its base.
The White House denied that the administration had chosen to remain in the Paris Agreement to the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and said its position hadn’t changed. Despite the denial, the Journal reports that a White House senior adviser, Everett Eissenstat, presented the U.S.’s reengagement plan to the ministers at the Montreal meeting.
*Correction, Sept. 17, 2017: This post originally misspelled New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush’s last name.
