Trump: US Will Not Fund UN Climate Change Program

As the race for president tightens between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Trump is making last-minute pitches for what his goals as president would be. During a November 2 campaign rally in Florida, Trump pledged to stop paying the UN to help fund its climate change programs.

“We will also cancel billions in global warming payments to the United Nations, and use that money to support America’s vital environmental infrastructure and natural resources,” Trump said, reports the Daily Caller.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States has pledged $3 billion to the UN Green Climate Fund. So far, the United States has only given $500 million to the GCF, which aims to help poor nations deal with the effects of climate change.

Since announcing the fund in 2014, Senate Republicans have sought to block all US contributions, reports The Hill. In June, the Senate passed a State Department and foreign operations bill that left no money for the GCF.

“We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump continued at his November 2 rally, reports the Daily Caller. “We don’t even know who’s doing what with the money. …We’re gonna work on our own environment. That includes repairing the Herbert Hoover Dike in Lake Okeechobee, protecting the Florida Everglades.”

Trump has repeatedly written off climate change as a Chinese hoax.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump tweeted in November 2012.

In January 2014, Trump tweeted, “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!

And on December 30, 2015, during a campaign rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Trump repeated his views to the crowd that climate change is a hoax, reports Politifact.

“Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and … a lot of it’s a hoax. It’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”

Sources: The Daily Caller, The Hill, Politifact, Donald Trump, (2) / Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr