By Jonathan Friedman
Associate Editor
June 23, 2017 -- State Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) added his name this week to an online statement challenging President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
The statement from the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators had been signed digitally by more than 550 legislators from 45 states as of Friday morning.
“We are committed to continuing the United States’ leadership in working toward a clean energy economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the statement says.
It continues, “Now more than ever, in the wake of this short-sighted decision by the federal administration, it is important that state and local governments come together to strengthen our resolve to meet our regional goals to reduce carbon pollution and our national goals to achieve the reductions agreed to in Paris.”
Allen tweeted this week about adding his name to the statement.
The climate agreement was signed two years ago in Paris by some 200 nations. Signatories must voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As as the world’s second largest emitter of carbon after China, the U.S. would be required to reduce fossil fuel emissions nearly 30 percent by 2025 under the Paris agreement.
President Trump has called the restrictions “draconian” and unfair to the United States.
Santa Monica’s other representative in the State legislature, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, had not added his name to the opposition statement as of Friday morning. But his view on Trump’s move is not ambiguous.
Bloom, who has proposed various environmental measures (as has Allen), tweeted the day before Trump announced his decision, “California will continue its prodigious efforts on climate change regardless of ill-conceived Trump decisions.”
