AP Photo/Keith Srakocic
Donald Trump speaks during a 2016 campaign stop at a metals recycling facility in Monessen, Pa.
A top Senate Democrat jabbed President Donald Trump on Thursday by reviving an eight-year-old letter in which Trump calls for urgent action on climate change.In the open letter, which appeared as a full-page advertisement in a 2009 edition of The New York Times, Trump and other business leaders urge then-President Obama to enact climate legislation, invest in clean energy projects, and lead the world in combating climate change. Trump's three adult children are also listed as signatories.
The open letter stands in stark contrast to Trump's current views on the environment. Trump has frequently expressed climate-change skepticism in recent years, including once in 2012 when he suggested that climate change was a Chinese-manufactured hoax. On Thursday, he is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, which is an agreement between 195 countries that set goals for reducing worldwide pollution.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee, didn't waste the opportunity to remind Trump of his apparent change of heart.
"Will President Trump heed his own advice?" Carper asked in a Twitter post.
The 2009 open letter first resurfaced last year in a report from Grist, a nonprofit environmental news site.
"If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet," the letter tells Obama and Congress ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December of that year.
It continues: "We urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass United States legislation, and lead the world by example. We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today."
"Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet."
#TBT to 2009 when Donald Trump urged President Obama to lead the world by example & #ActOnClimate. Will President Trump heed his own advice? pic.twitter.com/ypjAJi4GpB
- Senator Tom Carper (@SenatorCarper) June 1, 2017