 "Barack Obama, Joko Widodo")
Former US President Barack Obama has pointed to the importance of the Paris climate accord while criticising Donald Trump for pulling the world’s biggest economy out of the pact.
Trump said last month he would withdraw from the pact and seek to negotiate a better deal, in a move that attracted widespread criticism from counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.
“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change,” Obama said Saturday in a speech at the opening of the Fourth Congress of the Indonesian Diaspora in Jakarta. He said it was “an agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership will still give our children a fighting chance.”
“The challenges of our times, whether it’s economic inequality, changing climate, terrorism, mass migration; these are really challenges and we’re going to have to confront them together,” he said.
Obama, who has been holidaying in Indonesia and on Friday met with President Joko Widodo, also warned in remarks Saturday against rising sectarian politics around the world, as well as growing discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
He said in Jakarta there had been “enormous progress” which had occurred “in part because of the stability that the United States helped support here in the Asia Pacific.”
Trump said last month he would withdraw from the pact and seek to negotiate a better deal, in a move that attracted widespread criticism from counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.
“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change,” Obama said Saturday in a speech at the opening of the Fourth Congress of the Indonesian Diaspora in Jakarta. He said it was “an agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership will still give our children a fighting chance.”
“The challenges of our times, whether it’s economic inequality, changing climate, terrorism, mass migration; these are really challenges and we’re going to have to confront them together,” he said.
Obama, who has been holidaying in Indonesia and on Friday met with President Joko Widodo, also warned in remarks Saturday against rising sectarian politics around the world, as well as growing discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
He said in Jakarta there had been “enormous progress” which had occurred “in part because of the stability that the United States helped support here in the Asia Pacific.”
Bloomberg
