The Question Sean Spicer Hasn’t Asked The President It’s Only The World At Stake.

REBECCA LEBER

You’d think President Donald Trump’s opin­ion of cli­mate change might inform the deci­sion he promised to make on the Paris cli­mate accord this week, fol­low­ing meet­ings with G7 lead­ers who pres­sured him to keep the US engaged. But it seems his team does­n’t know what his posi­tion actu­al­ly is.

At a White House brief­ing on Tuesday, here is Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s response to a reporter’s ques­tion about whether Trump believes human activ­i­ty is con­tribut­ing to glob­al warm­ing: “Honestly, I haven’t asked him. I can get back to you.”

The reporter then asked if he feels as if Trump is still try­ing to make up his mind. “I don’t know,” Spicer responded.

Though Spicer did­n’t hint at what his boss will ulti­mate­ly decide, he men­tioned that Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt met on Tuesday. That might be a bad sign, as Pruitt has been lead­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s “leave” con­tin­gent.

It’s not just Spicer who’s sent mixed sig­nals about whether Trump still thinks glob­al warm­ing is a “total, and very expen­sive, hoax,” as he’s tweeted.

During a press brief­ing in late March, when Trump was rolling out his anti-cli­mate exec­u­tive orders, a reporter asked a senior White House offi­cial whether the pres­i­dent accept­ed that humans con­tribute to cli­mate change. “Sure. Yes, I think the pres­i­dent under­stands the dis­agree­ment over the pol­i­cy response,” he replied. But pressed fur­ther, he could­n’t ful­ly explain Trump’s posi­tion, his advis­ers, or his own, for that mat­ter. “I guess the key ques­tion is to what extent, over what peri­od of time,” he said. “Those are the big ques­tions that I think still we need to answer.”

His advis­ers have recent­ly sug­gest­ed that Trump’s views on the Paris deal and cli­mate change were, in the words of eco­nom­ic advis­er Gary Cohn, “evolv­ing,” though they’ve offered lit­tle evi­dence of what those views now are. “I think he is learn­ing to under­stand the European posi­tion,” Cohn said dur­ing the G7 meet­ings last week. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who acknowl­edges cli­mate change as a threat, claimed Trump was “curi­ous about why oth­ers were in the posi­tion they were” on the Paris deal, and that he was “wide open” on the issue.

Regardless what Trump thinks of the Paris agree­ment, he’s been clear that his pol­i­cy choic­es won’t reflect the best avail­able sci­ence. Our time­line of Trump’s com­ments on glob­al warm­ing should give you a bet­ter idea of the ebbs and flows of his posi­tion since 2009.