US open to climate pact, if conditions right

The US is open to staying in the Paris climate accord if it can find the right conditions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

The top diplomat’s comments came a day after the European Union said President Donald Trump’s administration is shifting its approach to the landmark global agreement on climate change, an assertion quickly denied by the White House.

“Under the right conditions, the president said he’s open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue,” Tillerson said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The US position is being “led and developed” by Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, Tillerson said. Cohn’s deputy, Everett Eissenstat, led a US delegation to Montreal this weekend where the US, China, Canada and almost 30 other countries discussed the sweeping climate.

Speaking from Montreal on Saturday, EU’s climate chief Miguel Arias Canete said in an interview that the US had signaled it wants to re-engage with the Paris Agreement from within, rather than withdrawing from the pact outright and then attempting to renegotiate it.

The White House rejected that characterisation. “Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed. @POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Twitter.

Tillerson said the administration’s position has been consistent since Trump announced, in a White House Rose Garden ceremony in June, that the US planned to start a multi-year process of exiting the climate pact.

“If you recall, the president also said, look, we’re willing to work with partners of the Paris climate accord, if we can construct a set of terms that we believe is fair and balanced for the American people,” Tillerson said.

Trump’s administration last month began the formal process of exiting from the climate accord. The EU’s Canete made the comments about a change of stance after meeting with Eissenstat, deputy director of the NEC and deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs.

“Now we don’t see the messages that they are withdrawing from the Paris agreement radically,” Canete said, adding that the countries at Saturday’s meeting agreed not to seek a re-negotiation of the Paris deal.