EU climate chief urges US to stay in Paris Accord

Donald Trump's return to the White House will be catastrophic for the fight against climate change if the incoming United States president pulls out of the Paris Accord, a top European Union official has said.

Trump, who will become the 47th US president on Jan 20, took his nation out of the accord in 2020, when he was serving his first term in the White House.

While President Joe Biden reversed the move 107 days later, in January 2021, Trump has already signaled his intention to withdraw from the accord once again.

Wopke Hoekstra, the EU's climate commissioner, told the Reuters news agency it would be disastrous if the world's second-largest polluter withdraws from the most important global treaty on tackling climate change and CO2 emissions.

"If that were to happen, that would be a serious blow for international climate diplomacy," Hoekstra said, adding that the rest of the world must "double down on climate diplomacy" to ensure such a thing does not happen.

"There's no alternative to make sure that, in the end, everyone chips in, because climate change is indiscriminate," Hoekstra said.

The United Nations' Paris Agreement, which was the product of negotiations involving almost 200 nations and territories, aims to ensure countries emit less CO2, and that wealthy nations help fund poorer nations' climate battles.

But the US, which was a key supporter of the accord when it was adopted in 2015, is likely to abandon the deal under Trump, who has previously called climate change a "hoax".

Last month, the president-elect signaled his disdain for the fight to reduce emissions by telling the EU to buy more oil and gas from his country or face new tariffs on EU exports.

Hoekstra said the EU will try to counter by urging people in the US to remain supportive of the accord.

"Making sure that our American friends, as much as is possible, are actually staying on board and are working on this together with us, is clearly something I will strive for," he told Reuters.

But many senior EU officials fear the US is no longer listening.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot summed up the deteriorating relationship on Tuesday when he asked Washington to stop coveting Greenland, an autonomous territory that belongs to EU member Denmark.

"There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders," he told France Inter radio. "We have entered an era that is seeing the return of the law of the strongest."

Barrot spoke after Trump also signaled his desire to take over the Panama Canal and to use "economic force" to make Canada become part of the US.