What? Bill O’Reilly Is Urging Trump to Keep the Paris Climate Agreement

So this happened.

Conservative TV host Bill O’Reilly is urging Donald Trump to stick to the Paris climate agreement, the global pact to reduce emissions that the president-elect has railed against for months. “It doesn’t really amount to much anyway,” O’Reilly told his Fox News audience Wednesday evening. “Let it go.”

O’Reilly is no fan of climate action. He said in 2011 that “nobody can control the climate but God.” But on Wednesday, O’Reilly said staying in the Paris agreement would “buy some goodwill overseas” for the incoming president. At least one prominent politician—Nicolas Sarkozy, the former leader of France who is running again for the presidency—has proposed tariffs on US imports should Trump pull out of the deal, which was signed in December 2015 and came into force just before the election.

On Thursday, Britain announced it had ratified the deal, while hundreds of major companies co-signed a letter urging Trump to uphold America’s climate pledges. The 360 companies included Nike, General Mills, and Hewlett Packard.

Trump has said that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese and has pledged to slash funding to United Nations climate programs. He put a prominent climate change denier, Myron Ebell, in charge of his Environmental Protection Agency transition team.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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