American people are with Paris climate deal, says David Sandalow

NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate deal is not going to stymie global efforts in fighting climate change, said David Sandalow, the inaugural fellow at the Columbia University Centre on Global Energy Policy.

“The American people are still with the Paris agreement. When Trump announced that he was going to formally withdraw the US federal government from the Paris agreement, thousands of companies and cities and states in the United States declared, ‘we are still in’,” he told ET.

America, being a major source of greenhouse gas, does make an impact when it decides to withdraw from its commitment to fight climate change, and it is disturbing that Trump refuses to acknowledge it, he said.

“We're living in a world of global warming and it's tragic that the US President refuses to acknowledge that, but it's a reality,” Sandalow said.

“Is it a fatal blow to world efforts to fight climate change? Absolutely not. If anything, I think I've been encouraged by the world reaction to this, saying we're not going to let that prevent us from going forward,” he added.

Sandalow, a former under secretary of energy in the Barack Obama administration, said the reactions from the Chinese government, and efforts from the Europeans and on part of the Indian government have been very strong. “So I think we have a strong global movement to address this,” he said.

Sandalow said the recent flood in Mumbai and Hurricane Harvey in the US were palpable examples of the effects of climate change and exactly what scientists had predicted.