Poll: Voters want US to seek new climate pact to replace Paris

More than two thirds of American voters want the United States to work up a new international climate change pact to replace the Paris agreement.

A new survey out Monday from the Harvard-Harris Poll provided to The Hill found that 72 percent of voters would prefer renegotiation over opting out of the climate pact process altogether.

President Trump, a climate-change skeptic, announced earlier this month that he would withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 pact and its nonbinding carbon dioxide emissions reductions, but he said he would be open to negotiating a new international agreement that better protects U.S. interests.

{mosads}Leaders of other major world powers such as France, Germany and Italy have shut down Trump’s renegotiation trial balloon, saying the pact cannot be renegotiated.

The Trump administration is not making renegotiation of a climate deal a priority. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said that any new agreement should focus on exporting U.S. technology abroad, not limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

The Harvard-Harris Poll, based on an online survey of 2,258 voters taken last week, found that 53 percent disagree with Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord, while 47 percent support the president’s choice.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this month found that 59 percent of voters oppose Trump’s Paris withdrawal, and an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll concluded that only 29 percent of voters fully support it.

Asked in the Harvard-Harris Poll whether it’s fair that countries such as India and China had less stringent emissions limits than the U.S. “even though these economies are leading sources of carbon emissions,” 75 percent said it is not fair.

Voters also came down mostly against former President Barack Obama’s contention that the Paris agreement didn’t require Senate approval as a treaty because the emissions limits were not binding.

Sixty-three percent of respondents said the Paris agreement or future climate pacts ought to go through Senate ratification.