Thursday, former secretary of state John Kerry said President Donald Trump’s reasons to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change were “fake news” that will end up putting “America last” in the renewable energy industry.
Kerry said, “My immediate reaction is this is an abdication of American leadership, a shameful moment for the United States to have unilaterally walked away from an agreement which did not have one other country requiring us to do something. It was a voluntary program. We designed the program. The president was not truthful with the American people today and the president who talked about putting America first has now put America last. Together with Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which though the agreement didn’t go far enough. This is an extraordinary moment of fake news because the economy he described is not the economy of America.”
“America has been gaining jobs in solar,” he continued. “Solar has gained 17 times the rate of our economy. There are 2.6 million jobs in our country in clean energy. Half of them are in the states that Donald Trump won. So he is not helping the forgotten American. He’s hurting them. Their kids will have worse asthma in the summer. They will have a harder time having economic growth. He’s made us an environmental pariah in the world. And I think it is one of the most self-destructive moves I’ve ever seen by any president in my lifetime.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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