President-elect Donald Trump told New York Times reporters and editors he would keep “an open mind” when it came to deciding whether or not to pull out of the United Nations global warming agreement.
Tom Friedman asks if Trump will withdraw from climate change accords. Trump: “I’m looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it.”
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016
Trump also said having “clean air is vitally important,” according to a tweet from a NYT reporter, and admitted there’s “some connectivity” between humans and global warming.
“Clean air is vitally important,” Trump says about climate change. Says he is keeping “an open mind.”
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016
Trump’s NYT interview came after he reportedly cancelled a meeting with the paper set for Tuesday, then criticized the Times for the “nasty tone” they take when covering him.
The Times later disputed reports Trump tried to change the ground rules of the interview at the last minute. NYT reporters were reportedly blindsided by Trump’s cancellation.
“We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in a statement.
So is this an about-face for Trump on global warming?
Trump’s previously called global warming a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese to hinder U.S. competitiveness, but he took a more moderate tone on the issue during the general election.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to pull out of the UN’s Paris climate treaty and repeal the Obama administration’s signature global warming rule for power plants.
Trump’s transition team also put out a video where the president-elect himself promised to get rid of “job-killing restrictions” on U.S. energy production through executive actions his first day in office.
“On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs,” Trump said.
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