US President Donald Trump has announced that he is withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has become the latest famous name to attack Donald Trump over his Paris withdrawal, saying: "One man cannot go back in time - only I can do that."
But the Terminator star had a serious message on climate change, telling the President in a powerful video message "one man cannot stop our clean energy revolution" or "destroy our progress".
The former Governor of California said that as a public servant, the President's first responsibility was to "protect the people", 200,000 of whom die each year from air pollution in the US alone.
"Please Mr President, choose the future," he begged. "No one remembers the people who told President Kennedy not to go to the Moon. We remember the great leaders.
BREAKING: Arnold Schwarzenegger has a blunt message for Donald Trump. #ParisAgreement
"The great leaders that don't walk backwards into the past but great leaders that charge forward towards the future."
Trump is withdrawing the US from the Paris agreement to curb climate change, in a move critics have slammed as "catastrophic" and "reckless".
This puts the US at odds with 194 countries - including Australia and New Zealand - that signed up to the deal in 2015, which is designed to slow global warming and rising sea levels.
Barack Obama was quick to attack the decision, as did former vice president Al Gore, who said the withdrawal was "reckless and indefensible". Hillary Clinton tweeted that it was a "historic mistake".
John Kerry, a co-signer of the Paris accord, said the President had taken "a self-destructive step" that put America last. The former Secretary of State called the move "an unprecedented forfeiture of American leadership which will cost us influence, cost us jobs and invite other countries to walk away from solving humanity's most existential crisis."
He said the decision was "an ignorant, cynical appeal to an anti-science, special-interest faction far outside the mainstream."
CNN columnist John D Sutter categorised the pullout as "catastrophic both for this country and the planet".
German news magazine Der Spiegel tweeted an image of its cover with the headline, "The end of the world as we know it" and the caption "America first! Earth last!"
The front page of the New York Daily News was equally direct, claiming Trump had told the world to "drop dead".
World leaders also turned on the US. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said in a joint statement on Thursday that they noted "with regret" the US decision to pull out of the 2015 agreement.
They added that the course charted by the accord is "irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated."
Mexico said in a statement: "Efforts to slow climate change are a moral imperative, because we owe it to future generations."
The White House said Trump spoke with the leaders of Germany, France, Canada and Britain on Thursday to explain his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and thanked the leaders for their "frank, substantive discussions" with him.
The announcement, made Thursday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, fulfils Trump's election promise to pull out of the pact, which he has described as a job killer.
"As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country," Trump said.
"So we're getting out but we'll start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that's fair. And if we can, that's great. And if we can't, that's fine," he said.
Trump suggested that other nations were "laughing" at America and that the accord was "about other countries gaining an advantage over the United States".
"At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?" Trump said.
"We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers.
"We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won't be, they won't be.
"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburg, not Paris."
But the Mayor of Pittsburg, has shot back on Twitter, slamming Trump's decision.
As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future. https://t.co/3znXGTcd8C
Washington Governor Jay Inslee told reporters that states are free to act on their own to reduce pollution. Inslee said Washington state, New York and California are forming the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition that will convene states committed to working to uphold the Paris climate agreement.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said Trump's decision was a "disgrace".
The withdrawal puts the US in a dubious club with Nicaragua and Syria as the only countries to reject the agreement.
Trump's announcement was met with applause from the crowd of supporters gathered in the Rose Garden. The President said the US would endeavour to either re-enter the Paris accord or propose a new deal "on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers".
"As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens," he said.
"The Paris climate agreement is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers - who I love - and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production."
The decision means the US will pull out of the Green Climate Fund, which Trump said cost the country "a vast fortune".
Citing a study by the National Economic Research Associates (NERA), the President said compliance with the existing deal would cost the US as many as 2.7 million jobs by 2025.
He said the agreement would "decimate" the coal, steel and car manufacturing industries.
Trump stressed that he "cares deeply" about the environment. "Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, it fails to live up to our environmental ideals," he said.
"As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States - the world's leader in environmental protection - while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world's leading polluters."
Trump said China had been given a free pass to increase its carbon emissions for a "staggering" 13 years.
Obama said the withdrawal meant the Trump administration had made the US one of "a small handful of nations that reject the future".
"I'm confident that our states, cities and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got," he said in a statement.
Gore, who starred in the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, said the decision "undermines America's standing in the world and threatens to damage humanity's ability to solve the climate crisis in time".
Even oil companies have voiced opposition to pulling out of the agreement, with Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips arguing that the US is better off with a seat at the table so it can influence global efforts to curb emissions, Bloomberg reports.
Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger and Tesla boss Elon Musk both announced their resignation from the President's Council over the withdrawal.
Weather.com mocked the President today with sarcastic headlines splashed across its homepage. "Hmm, I did not see a forecast for shade when I checked the Weather Channel app this morning. Yet here it is," tweeted Politico senior editor Alex Weprin.
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) June 1, 2017
UK environmental law firm ClientEarth's chief executive James Thornton said: "Trump's decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement is an act of vandalism that has the potential to do great harm to current and future generations."
Trump has argued behind closed doors in Washington that the Paris accord was a bad deal for America and was poorly negotiated by the Obama administration. Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said he had spoken to Malcolm Turnbull, who is in Singapore, following the announcement, and Australia remains committed to the agreement.
"Donald Trump's announcement today is obviously very significant but Australia will carry on because as our prime minister has made very clear, when we sign up to international agreements ...we will follow through," Mr Frydenberg told Australia's ABC today.
Critics have argued that Trump's decision amounts to the US shirking its responsibility as the leader of the free world.
Trump said the US's exit from the Paris Agreement was in part to help the country's ailing coal industry. Photo / AP
FACT CHECK: Trump's justification for climate change about-face
Announcing that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump misplaced the blame for what ails the coal industry and laid a shaky factual foundation for his decision.
A look at some of the claims in a Rose Garden speech and an accompanying fact sheet about the deal to curtail emissions responsible for global warming
WHITE HOUSE: The Paris climate accord "would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power."
THE FACTS: The U.S. coal industry was in decline long before the Paris accord was signed in 2015. The primary cause has been competition from cleaner-burning natural gas, which has been made cheaper and more abundant by hydraulic fracturing. Electric utilities have been replacing coal plants with gas-fired facilities because they are more efficient and less expensive to operate.
TRUMP: Claims "absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day," adding "more than a million private-sector jobs."
THE FACTS: That's basically right, but he earns no credit for jobs created in the months before he became president. To rack up that number, the president had to reach back to October. Even then, private-sector job creation from October through April (171,000 private-sector jobs a month) lags just slightly behind the pace of job creation for the previous six months (172,000), entirely under President Barack Obama.
TRUMP: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
THE FACTS: That may be so, but Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is not Trump country. It voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in November, favoring her by a margin of 56 percent to Trump's 40 percent. The city has a climate action plan committing to boost the use of renewable energy. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, has been an outspoken supporter of the Paris accord, and tweeted after Trump's announcement that "as the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future."
WHITE HOUSE: "According to a study by NERA Consulting, meeting the Obama administration's requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades. By 2040, our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs - including 3.1 million manufacturing sector jobs."
THE FACTS: This study was paid for by two groups that have long opposed environmental regulation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation. Both get financial backing from those who profit from the continued burning of fossil fuels. The latter group has received money from foundations controlled by the Koch brothers, whose company owns refineries and more than 4,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines. The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects. Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation doesn't actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.
WHITE HOUSE: Citing a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "If all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible," curbing temperature rise by "less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100."
THE FACTS: The co-founder of the MIT program on climate change says the administration is citing an outdated report, taken out of context. Jake Jacoby said the actual global impact of meeting targets under the Paris accord would be to curb rising temperatures by 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit." They found a number that made the point they want to make," Jacoby said. "It's kind of a debate trick." One degree may not sound like much, but Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, says, "Every tenth of a degree increases the number of unprecedented extreme weather events considerably."
