VA Senators respond to Trump climate change statement

Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine strongly criticized President Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
“President Trump’s disappointing action today places our national security at risk, and it will harm the health and safety of Americans,” Warner said. “It is a rejection of settled science and it poses a direct threat to Virginia’s environment, economy and way of life. Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and abdicating America’s leadership role in the world is a historic mistake.”
Kaine said the announcement cedes the United States’ leadership role on the environment. “President Trump’s retreat from the Paris Agreement will turn over America’s international leadership role to China and make it harder to deal with the realities of climate change we already see at home in places like Hampton Roads, Virginia,” Kaine said. “This retreat also reflects an extraordinary lack of faith in American innovation, as the President seems to think that the U.S. commitment to cut about 1/4th of our carbon pollution by 2025 is beyond the grasp of the country that won World War II and put men on the moon. I reject the notion that this nation has to choose between our clean energy and economic goals. I want to tell my grandchildren that the United States met this challenge head-on and triumphed over it, not shrank and cowered from it. I am confident that our nation’s optimistic, can-do spirit will eventually prevail over this short-sighted dereliction of America’s leadership role.”