After Trump, Petition Calling for Protection of the Paris Accord Has 800,000 Signatures

Petition on Avaaz is receiving support from people around the world

Practically every second the petition on the site Avaaz “World Leaders: Protect the Paris Accord” is receiving signatures from diverse countries such as Israel, Brazil and Russia—up to now, it has already received more than 820,000 of them. With a photo of Donald Trump, recently elected to the presidency of the U.S., the campaign warns that in a few months the Republican “could go to war with climate action.”

The fear has a history: since the beginning of the campaign, Trump has called global warming a “hoax” and promised in May to “cancel” the treaty. According to the news agency Reuters, sources from the transition staff said that the new administration is looking for alternatives to accelerate the country’s exit from the treaty. Under the rules that were endorsed, abandonment by a signatory country takes four years.

According to the campaign, there is an Avaaz team at the 22nd Climate Conference of the United Nations in Marrakech, which ends this Friday after two weeks of encounters and meetings. The idea is that, when the online petition arrives at a million signatures, the petition will be delivered to the government officials at the event.

“As global citizens, we strongly oppose any plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, that could put our planet in peril. We call on you to move ahead with plans to bring carbon emissions to zero through 100% clean energy, and to provide funding to the most vulnerable, regardless of the direction the new President takes,“ says the petition.

The 22nd Climate Conference was the first effective step to begin to define, in practice, the implementation of the Paris Accord, approved in 2015. Among other commitments, the treaty stipulates the goal by the end of the century of maintaining global temperatures within 2°C of pre-industrial levels.