US doing little to tackle climate change, say green bodies

Green bodies today criticised the US president's claim that "major polluting nations" like India were contributing "nothing" towards tackling climate change, saying the US was itself "doing little" to fight the menace.

The climate action pledges taken by India to curb emissions were "much more" than that of US, the green bodies claimed.

An Environment Ministry source said that India was "doing a lot" in terms of climate change.

"The statement (made by US President Donald Trump) is not correct. The climate pledges to curb green house gas emissions taken by India are much more ambitious than those taken by the US or the European Union," Vijeta Rattani, climate analyst at Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said.

President Donald Trump had yesterday promised to make a "big decision" on the "one-sided" Paris climate deal soon as he alleged that the US was being unfairly targeted by asking to pay money while major polluting nations like Russia, China and India were contributing "nothing".

The Paris climate deal within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 2015 by 194 countries and ratified by 143.

It aims to hold the increase in average global temperature to below 2 degrees above pre-industrial level by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

On the point raised by Trump that the US was being made to pay billions of dollars, Rattani said as per the commitments made, it is the developed countries who have pledged to provide financing to developing countries (for cleaner energy and address climate change).

"He (Trump) is not going by the principle of equity. It was the US because of which, the Paris agreement was weakened and was not so ambitious," Rattani said.

Meanwhile, the source in the Environment Ministry said the US has not honoured its commitments in the context of financing and technology transfer.

"The US president, much before being elected to his present office, had been saying similar things on the issue of climate change," the source said.

Trump had recently signed an executive order to nullify his predecessor Barack Obama's climate change efforts, raising questions over America's leadership in the international campaign against global warming.

Trump signed the order at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), keeping his campaign promise to support the coal industry.

"If Trump and his administration think they can hold the world hostage and use blackmail to gain special treatment for their fossil-fuel addiction then they are clearly mistaken.

"The rest of the world will not let a climate sceptic government dictate their pace or slow down the global clean energy transition," Greenpeace India said.

The green body said that the safety of climate is reliant on the commitment to robust climate action that almost 200 countries agreed to in Paris.

"If the Trump administration plans to stay in Paris only to undermine the agreement, then other leaders should call the US government out and hold them to account," the NGO said.

Trump had yesterday claimed that it was estimated that compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America's GDP by USD 2.5 trillion over a 10-year period.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)