Europe and the world now must embrace the immediate and radical exit from coal, petroleum, natural gas and uranium.

The new EPA director and sworn enemy of the environment Scott Pruitt even denies that he is a climate change denier. He is ideologically and politically opposed to the comprehensive shift to renewable energy - and has seized power in all matters climate change policy. Not only is he hell-bent on demolishing the most important achievements of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, he has reinforced Donald Trump in his decision that the best revenge for the 'European humiliation' - the meetings with NATO, Pope, Merkel, Macron and others - is the theatrical exit from the Paris Climate Accord. The Accord is weak - but now its weakness has become terrifyingly obvious: the Accord will not save us, and working with Trump only accelerates the cynical spiral into the climate abyss.

Europe and the world community now have also politically and existentially no other choice but the immediate and comprehensive entry into the Solar Age: to compensate for the temporary national policy lapse of the US, to build resilience, regional prosperity and resource autonomy, to save the costs for subsidising and importing petroleum, natural gas, coal and uranium, and provide important impulses in technological and industrial innovations and market positions.

Statement by EUROSOLAR President Professor Peter Droege on the Paris-exit by the United States
Bonn, 6 June 2017