United States President Donald Trump has reportedly decided to withdraw from the Paris climate deal. According to Axios, the details of the pullout are being worked out by a team which includes Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt, in an interview last month, had said that the US should "exit" the Paris Agreement.
Reports state that the decision to pull out from the climate agreement was influenced by a letter from at least 22 Republican US senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling for an exit, Axios reported
The Paris Agreement, which was signed in 2015, was reached between nearly 200 countries, including the US, with a goal to limit global warming well below two degree Celcius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Trump, however, has always been critical of the global climate accord, calling global warming a hoax, and had pledged to withdraw from the deal during the presidential elections campaign last year.
Trump had also refused to endorse the landmark climate change accord at a summit of the G7 group of nations on Saturday. The US President had said that he required more time to decided whether he wanted the US to stay in the deal or not.
Trump had later tweeted saying that he would make an announcement about his decision on the deal this week.
On Wednesday, Fox News also cited unidentified sources confirming that Trump was set to pull out of the climate deal.
The decision to back out of the global climate accord will put the US in the league with Syria and Nicaragua as the world's only non-participants in the Paris Agreement. The US' withdrawal from the pact can have sweeping implications for the climate deal as it heavily relies on the commitment of countries which emit a lot of pollution to reduce emissions of gases which are blamed for sea level rise, droughts and frequent storms across the world.
Under the pact, the US had committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent below its 2005 level in 2025. The US is the world's second-biggest carbon dioxide emitter behind China.
