Duterte: Paris Agreement ‘a farce’ if big nations won’t adopt it ‘heartily’

President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday that rich industrialized countries should “heartily” adopt the Paris climate agreement or it would be “a farce.”

“Unless the hypocrites, the big powers really, adopt it heartily, then we could have climate change,” Duterte said in a speech in during the presentation of new generation currencies in Malacañang.

He said the effects of climate change would come “fast” if the signatories of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change would not be compelled to follow the pact.

“This climate change (agreement) could be a farce if we cannot compel the other nations, especially the industrialized nations to follow,” he said.

In March 2017, in spite of misgivings, President Duterte signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, a pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep rising global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.

The President had earlier blamed climate change on rich Western countries like the United States, Spain, France, Britain and Italy.

He said these countries have caused the warming of temperatures worldwide.

“They went to the Middle East and siphoned off the oil of the Arabs,” he said in Filipino.   /muf