US President-elect Donald Trump is seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying broad international backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Since Trump's election victory on Tuesday, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris agreement during climate talks involving 200 nations set to run until Friday in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Trump has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement, which was strongly supported by outgoing Democratic US President Barack Obama.
Trump's advisers are considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source, who works on Trump's transition team for international energy and climate policy.
"It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election", the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Paris accord won enough backing for entry into force on November 4, four days before the election.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday in New Zealand that the Obama administration would do everything it could to implement the Paris accord before Trump takes office.
The accord says in its Article 28 that any country wanting to pull out after signing on has to wait four years. In theory, the earliest date for withdrawal would be November 4, 2020, around the time of the next US presidential election.
The source said the future Trump administration is weighing alternatives that could accelerate the pull-out: sending a letter withdrawing from the 1992 international framework accord that is the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement; voiding US involvement in both in a year's time; or issuing a presidential order simply deleting the US signature from the Paris accord.
Withdrawing from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be controversial, partly because it was signed by former Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and approved by the US Senate. The action also could antagonise many other countries.
