President Donald Trump sounded skeptical about the United Nation’s dire new report on the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, telling reporters that he wants to look into those who crafted it.
The report “was given to me. And I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it,” Trump said on the White House’s South Lawn.
Released Sunday, the report warned that the world is rapidly running out of time to scale back greenhouse gas emissions before catastrophic planetary changes occur.
“I can give you reports that are fabulous and I can give you reports that aren’t so good,” Trump said.
Although he didn’t specify which reports he was referring to, he has often cited research by the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation when trying to make the case that cutting carbon emissions would have little effect on global temperatures.
But the data laid out by the Washington-based think tank in its study is misleading, economic and environmental experts have said. It envisions a scenario in which the U.S. acts alone on climate change, not in tandem with the 194 other countries that agreed to emissions reductions in the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The data in the UN’s new document is unlikely to sway Trump, who has vowed to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and has taken steps to dismantle every major policy designed to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint.
The report cited more than 6,000 scientific references and was put together by 91 researchers and editors from 40 countries involved with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“This is one of the most important reports ever produced by the IPCC, and certainly one of the most needed,” Hoesung Lee, the chair of the body, said at a press conference in South Korea on Monday. “Climate change is already affecting people, livelihood and ecosystems all around the world.”