The United States President, Donald Trump, on Tuesday, called himself an ‘environmentalist’ and claimed that India, China, and Russia were letting out garbage into the sea that floats into Los Angeles in the US.
Trump’s comments came while he was speaking at the Economic Club of New York. “We have a relatively small piece of land – the United States,” Trump said. “And you compare that to some of the other countries like China, like India, like Russia are doing absolutely nothing to clean up their smokestacks and clean up all of their plants and all of the garbage that they’re dropping in the sea and that floats into Los Angeles.”
Referring to climate change as a “very complex issue”, he said, “I consider myself to be, in many ways, an environmentalist, believe it or not.”
“When I build buildings, I did the best environmental impact statements,” Trump claimed. He also said that the US withdrew from the Paris climate agreement as it was a “one-sided, horrible, horrible, economically unfair” one. “The horrible Paris Climate Accord killed American jobs and shielded foreign polluters,” Trump said, alleging that it was a disaster for the country.
The United States, under former President Barack Obama, had entered the Paris agreement in 2015. The Obama administration had decided to cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 per cent by 2025 to curb global warming.
Trump claimed that countries like China and India, which were leading polluters, were getting away with a deal that was partial to them. His decision recieved flak from many world leaders. “Trillions and trillions of dollars of destruction would have been done to our country with the Paris Climate Accord,” Trump said, claiming that the US was a developing nation too.
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