California and Brazil have struck a climate agreement hours after President Donald Trump condemned so-called “climate change.”
“By strengthening our partnership with Brazil, California is reaffirming a simple truth: global challenges require global cooperation,” Newsom said in a statement. “This couldn’t be more true as we look forward to the UN’s Global Climate Conference that Brazil is hosting later this year. We can work together to cut harmful pollution, protect critical ecosystems, and build economies that work for people and our planet.”
“Partnerships with subnational governments, such as the memorandum of understanding signed today with the state of California, are essential to ensure that climate action continues to move forward in the United States, for the benefit of its own population and all of humanity,” said Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva.
Brazil is set to host the United Nation’s Global Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November.
The memorandum of understanding between the two bodies asserts that “climate change is an urgent issue,” adding that it is an “imperative for climate action to provide economic and human health benefits to disadvantaged and low-income communities.”
The agreement seeks to “establish a flexible framework” to “provide mutual exchanges of knowledge and best practices in progressing towards Brazil’s and California’s respective targets for carbon neutrality.”
Newsom previously signed a memorandum of understanding with 21 Brazilian state governors, as well as an agreement with Denmark, South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province, Sweden, Norway, China, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump said, “Global warming- not happening.”
“Climate change— it’s the greatest con-job ever perpetrated on the world,” he added, going on to say that “all of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.”
