Scott Pruitt: ‘The Paris Agreement Was Simply a Bad Deal for This Country’

EXCERPT:

PRUITT: "What's so interesting -- if you go back to when we exit Kyoto in 2001 and read accounts then by the German chancellor, they are identical to today. I mean, Europe wants the United States to stay in agreements like the Paris accord, because it puts us in an economic disadvantage. And -- and when you look at what we’ve done already in this country to reduce our CO2 footprint, we are at pre-1994 levels today. From 2000 and 2014 after we exited Kyoto, we reduced the carbon footprint by over 18 percent. So we led through action, not words, not just simply those kinds of labels that are used. The Paris agreement was simply a bad deal for this country. The president has said we're going to continue engagement, we're going to continue leading on reduction of CO2, but we are not going to agree to situations like the Paris accords that put us in an economic disadvantage as compared to the rest of the world."