Trump administration tries to remove mention of climate change from Arctic statement: media

The Trump administration has sought to remove the reference to climate change from a statement on Arctic policy at an upcoming international Arctic meeting, US media reported on Thursday.

According to a report from The Washington Post, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to endorse the statement next week in the 11th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting, "the Trump administration's position, at least initially, threatened a standoff in which the United States would not sign onto a statement that included climate discussion and other members would not agree to a version that left it out."

Washington "objected to language that, while non-binding, could be read as a collective commitment to address the effects of climate change in the Arctic," the report quoted people familiar with the discussions as saying, adding that at meetings last month, the United States "indicated its resistance to any mention of climate change whatsoever."

Yet, the report added that "the US position appears to have softened in recent days."

"At one point, they wanted to remove the expression 'climate change' and blocked references of the Paris agreement and other international agreements in the language. But the dialogue has improved during the last couple of days," the post quoted a senior official as saying.

The Trump administration has been skeptical of the climate change narration.

US President Donald Trump said in June 2017 that he had decided to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris climate accord, which had been agreed on by almost every country in the world in 2015, as to tackle climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and set a global target of containing the temperature rise.