White House postpones meeting on Paris climate deal

The White House has postponed a meeting originally scheduled for Tuesday during which top Trump administration officials were to discuss whether to stay in or exit the Paris climate change agreement.

The meeting was postponed because of scheduling conflicts, a White House official said.

The official did not yet say when a rescheduled meeting would be held.

Participants were expected to focus on potential legal implications of staying in the pact. People familiar with the discussion said it could have been the last chance for the administration’s warring factions to flesh out arguments.

{mosads}President Trump in the past promised to “cancel” the 2015 pact signed by former President Barack Obama, in which nearly 200 countries agreed on a nonbinding basis to reduce or limit their greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump continues to bash the agreement as a bad deal for the country, which agreed to cut its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent from current levels by 2025.

At a rally last month, he called it a “one-sided deal” in which the U.S. “pays billions of dollars while China, Russia and India have contributed and will contribute nothing.”

Still, senior administration officials are divided over whether the U.S. should stay in the agreement.