U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed budget takes an ax to spending on the environment. It calls for a 31 percent reduction at the nation’s Environmental Protection Agency.

CGTN’s Jessica Stone reports.

One of the loudest voices supporting the historic Paris climate agreement has gone silent. U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget slashes 31 percent from the Environmental Protection Agency — eliminating funding for key commitments to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the president was fairly straight-forward,” U.S. Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney said. “We’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste.”

The budget blueprint unveiled Thursday cuts to zero the funding to reduce power plant emissions, money for international climate change programs and the remaining $2 billion that the U.S. promised to contribute to the Green Climate Fund.

That fund, supported in large part by the U.S., was supposed to help nations vulnerable to climate change mitigate the impact of a warming planet.

“By moving away from this whole global approach to climate and basically isolating the U.S. more generally, the Trump administration would be driving more instability around the world, creating more pollution, and undermining the goodwill that was established for the United States under the Obama administration,” John Coequyt, Global Climate Policy Director for the Sierra Club said.

After years of negotiation, it took the partnership and hard work of China and the United States to reach the Paris climate deal in December of 2015.  They are the world’s two largest carbon emitters.

In January of this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a gathering at the World Economic Forum, that all Paris “signatories should stick to” the agreement. He said tackling climate change is a responsibility nations owe to future generations.

There is one renewable energy source that does get a boost from Trump’s proposed budget. The blueprint provides $120 million to restart licensing activities for Yucca Mountain, a planned nuclear waste site in Nevada.

Trump’s first budget is of course a statement of priorities. The blueprint is never actually passed by the U.S. Congress. Ultimately, it’s the opening bid in a negotiation between a deal maker President and Capitol Hill. Either way, climate change policy is in his cross-hairs.

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