In 2012, US President-elect Donald Trump accused China of creating the concept of global warming as part of an elaborate hoax in a now-infamous tweet:
The tweet was shared more than 100,000 times and picked up almost 70,000 likes after it resurfaced during the celebrity businessman's election campaign.
Following his upset win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election last week, China decided to address the accusation.
Speaking at United Nations talks this week in Morocco, China’s Vice Foreign Minister, Liu Zhenmin, pointed out that it was Trump’s GOP predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who had initiated plans to tackle global warming without involving China.
Liu said that China wasn’t even aware that negotiations had started when Reagan and Bush were initiating global warming talks at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu told media during a briefing.
The Donald told media in January of this year that his tweet was simply a "joke." But when Clinton pointed out the quote during the debates, Trump vehemently denied ever saying it, telling viewers: "I did not say that, I did not say that."
It is still uncertain whether Trump will follow through with his campaign promise to pull out of the Paris Agreement, an international deal that aims to tackle climate change.
[Images via Straits Times, Slate, Salon]
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