DALLAS (AP) – The reaction among Texas leaders to President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States after the Paris climate agreement largely fell along partisan lines.
Trump declared Thursday that he was withdrawing the United States from the landmark agreement, striking a major blow to worldwide efforts to combat climate change and distancing the country from many allies abroad.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, cheered the decision for breaking with Obama administration energy policy. He said that “instead of preaching about clean energy, this administration will act on it.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas and the GOP’s second-ranking member of the Senate, applauded the decision as Trump “continues to turn the page on the previous administration’s job-killing regulatory agenda.” And Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and a former Republican presidential candidate, hailed the decision “for putting American jobs first.”
However, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, called the decision a “capitulation” that “abandons American families to the growing harm of climate change and surrenders leadership on renewable energy to foreign competitors.” Doggett, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax Policy, said the “repeated Republican denial of science means more disease, flooding and extreme weather – more expensive disasters and lost lives and livelihoods.” He added that, “beyond these climate dangers, other countries are seeing that they cannot rely upon the U.S. any more than we can rely upon the latest Trump tweet.”
