Climate change was not a hoax invented by the Chinese, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters at the United Nations climate change conference in Morocco this week.
Foreign Ministers are meeting in Marrakech this week to discuss the framework of last year’s Paris agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, but it is a meeting overshadowed by uncertainty about America’s support for the deal under a Trump administration.
In 2012 the then real estate mogul and reality TV star tweeted:
At the Marrakech conference, China rebuked that assessment.
“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Vice-Foreign Minister Liu said on Wednesday, according to .
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump said he would tear up the Paris deal, stop funding international climate change programs, and bring new life to America’s coal and industries.
US Secretary of State John Kerry addressed concerns over Mr Trump head-on at the conference.
“While I can't stand here and speculate about what policies our president-elect will pursue, I will tell you this – In the time that I have spent in public life, one of the things I've learned is that some issues look a little bit different when you're actually in office compared to when you're on the campaign trail,” Secretary Kerry said.
It’s unclear whether President-elect Trump will actually be able to withdraw from the agreement, which entered into binding legal force on November 4 this year after being ratified by the majority of the world’s emitters.
Under , America must wait until 2019 before it can give notice of intent to withdraw, and must then wait another year before withdrawal takes effect.
By that time, President-elect Trump’s first term will be drawing to a close.
If America chooses to ignore the agreement, however, it’s unclear how the international community would respond.
