Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) says that President Trump is “jealous” of former President Barack Obama’s achievements.
“Why did Trump really walk away from #ParisAgreement?” Kaine tweeted Friday. “He’s surrounded by science deniers and fossil fuel junkies.”
“POTUS jealous of Obama accomplishments,” he added in another tweet. “But in the end, American innovative spirit is stronger than his insecurities.”
{mosads}Kaine added that, in light of Trump’s Thursday decision to leave the Paris climate agreement, local governments and private businesses and researchers, rather than the Trump administration, would have to protect the environment.
“U.S. private sector, researchers, cities, towns and states will lead clean energy revolution despite lack of leadership from WH & President,” the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee tweeted.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement makes the U.S. one of only three countries in the world that have not committed to the agreement.
“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be,” he said at the White House Rose Garden. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”
Trump’s move fulfilled a pledge from his 2016 campaign.
Obama said Thursday that Trump’s decision places the U.S. among “a small handful of nations that reject the future.”
“The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” he said in a statement.
Obama was instrumental in negating the 2015 accord, which consisted of nonbinding individual greenhouse gas limits each signatory nation determined for itself.
Under Obama, the U.S. pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.