Abacus | Breathe easy, neither Trump nor critics of Paris pullout will affect climate

Seldom can the great and the good of the world have been so united in such a chorus of condemnation. And seldom can their hypocrisy and self-righteous self-interest been so nakedly displayed.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international accord under which the world’s nations proclaimed their intention to limit global warming. Speaking – with a nice touch of irony – in the White House rose garden, Trump complained that the Paris accord was “very unfair” to the US. “So we’re getting out,” the president declared, promising that he would seek to negotiate a better deal.

The denunciations followed thick and fast. In a leaked joint European Union-China statement, Chinese premier Li Keqiang joined with EU leaders to say that combating climate change is “more important than ever”. Li pledged that China would not shirk its “international responsibility” and would work with the EU to uphold the Paris Agreement.

In the US, Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, on whose watch the Paris deal was signed, said the new administration had aligned itself with those who “reject the future”. And a whole parade of business leaders lined up to slam the president’s stance, among them the heads of corporate giants Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Even Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took to Twitter for the first time ever to criticise Trump’s abrogation of the Paris accord, calling it “a setback for the environment and for the US’s leadership position in the world”.

With US out of Paris climate deal, China’s now able to lead … but is it willing?

Blankfein, one of the most reviled figures in global business, who is widely regarded as a symbol of everything that is worst in the banking industry, clearly figured this was a neat opportunity to burnish his own muddied reputation at zero cost.