WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, released a statement on Thursday after President Trump announced that he will withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris Climate Agreement is the largest multilateral cooperative agreement ever reached to address the challenge of global climate change, signed by nearly every country in the world. 

“Leaving the Paris Accord is a moral abomination. Our duty, as temporary occupants of this earth, is to leave the planet for our children and grandchildren in at least as good a condition as we found it. By turning our back on the global effort to stop the catastrophic warming of our planet in such a public and spiteful way, President Trump risks dooming the future of the planet and the future of our civilization. If climate change continues unchecked, the great coastal cities of the world will be wiped out, crops will fail, and people will die. That's not hyperbole – that’s science. Luckily, this does not need to be our fate if we choose to invest in cleaner ways to power our world. But by pulling out of the Paris Accord, the United States signals it does not want to be part of this vital effort.  

“The withdrawal from Paris is part of a strategy, pushed by the neo-anarchists that surround the president, to shrink the United States back into its borders and end a century of U.S. global leadership. This is a gift to the Chinese and the Russians and other ascendant nations who will eagerly fill this leadership void. And to make matters even worse, as the rest of the world pursues a course of renewable energy, all the millions of jobs that go with that transition will be created in countries that stay in the Paris Accord. The president's decision to leave Paris is both a planet killer and a job killer. 

“The irony of it all is that I suspect the president doesn't know the first thing about the agreement or any of its details. If he did, he would have never made this disastrous, immoral decision.”

Earlier this month, Murphy helped introduce a resolution stating that the United States should work in cooperation with the international community and continue to exercise global leadership to address the causes and effects of climate change. 

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