A reporter asked President Obama on Friday if he was “embarrassed” by Republicans because they don’t take the threat of climate change seriously.
“Is it embarrassing to you that the other party denies climate change?” Philip Crowther, a foreign correspondent who covers the White House for France 24 and RFI, asked the president.
“No,” the president stated flatly. “First of all, I’m not a member of that party. Second of all, it didn’t stop us from being the key lead for getting this done.”
The deal the president referenced is the so-called Paris Agreement, a major accord adopted last weekend by nearly 200 countries who have vowed to fight global warming.
“I mean, this is something I’ve been working on now for five, six years,” the president said. “When I went to Copenhagen, I essentially engaged in 24 hours of diplomacy to salvage from a pretty chaotic process the basic principles that all countries had to participate.”
“We couldn’t have a rigid division between developed countries and developing countries when it came to solving this problem,” he added. “That was the initial foundation for us, then working with other countries, culminating in the joint announcement with china, bringing in India and Brazil and the other big emerging countries, working with Europeans and getting this done.”
He continued, explaining that the deal was only possible because of American leadership.
The Paris Agreement seeks to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and then hopefully eliminate it altogether. Early reports indicate that there will be no economic sanctions imposed on countries that don’t sign on to the accord.
The pact aims to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, with an eye to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“[T]he American Republican Party is the only major party that I can think of in the advanced world that effectively denies climate change,” the president added in his remarks. “I mean, it’s an outlier. Many of the key signatories to this deal, the architects of this deal come from center-right governments. Even the far-right parties in many of these countries – they may not like immigrants, for example, but they admit, yes, the science tells us we’ve got to do something about climate change.”
“So my sense is, is that this is something that may be an advantage in terms of short-term politics and a Republican primary. It’s not something that is going to be a winner for Republicans long term,” he added.
