Energy

Trump’s Secretary Of State Pick Wants International Response To Global Warming

(REUTERS/Mike Stone/File Photo)

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said the U.S. should keep a “seat at the table” in future negotiations to tackle global warming.

“I think its important that the United States maintain its seat at the table on the conversations around how to address threats of climate change, which do require a global response,” Tillerson said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. “No one country is going to solve this alone.”

Tillerson was responding to Maryland’s Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin’s question, who asked if Tillerson agreed with the current United Nations global warming agreement.

Tillerson was the chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil from 2006 to 2016. Under his management, the company publicly supported a tax on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Despite Tillerson’s support for carbon taxation and the UN global warming agreement, environmentalists have fought his nomination.

“Tillerson has backed human rights violations, corruption, and environmental devastation that disqualify him from becoming the top U.S. diplomat,” Kate Colwell, a spokesperson for the environmental group Friends of the Earth said in a press statement. “The Senate should rise above Trump’s hideous pick and reject Tillerson’s nomination for Secretary of State.”

Members of other green groups even dressed up as dinosaurs to protest Tillerson’s confirmation hearing, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Rex Tillerson has got to go.”

Only four nations  — Ireland, Sweden, Chile, and Finland — actually have carbon taxation today. The largest economy to ever have a carbon tax, Australia, repealed it in 2014 over concerns it was harming the economy. No country taxes CO2 emissions at the levels deemed necessary to substantially mitigate global warming as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Research has found that even the most well regarded carbon taxes haven’t done much to actually reduce CO2 emissions.

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