US mayors bypass Trump to back Paris accord

‘Hundreds of US mayors have agreed to respect a landmark 2015 global pact to fight climate change despite President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw from the deal, a US official says.
In a meeting in the Belgium capital Brussels on Tuesday, Kasim Reed, the mayor of the southern US city of Atlanta, said that Republican and Democratic mayors from 300 US cities had unanimously agreed a day earlier to back the Paris Climate Agreement, disregarding Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the international pact.
Reed added that he wanted to send a signal of “optimism, passion, and action” on fighting climate change to mayors worldwide despite the withdrawal the US president announced earlier this month.
“President Trump’s disappointing decision to withdraw from the agreement will actually have the opposite effect in terms of execution,” Reed said in an address to a handful of mayors from Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and North America in the Tuesday meeting chaired by top European Union and United Nations officials.’
Read more: US mayors bypass Trump to back Paris accord