US to join climate talks despite Paris treaty exit

The United States announced Friday it would still take part in international climate change negotiations in order to protect its interests, despite its planned withdrawal from the Paris accord on global warming.

Two months after President Donald Trump announced the United States would abandon the 2015 global pact, his administration confirmed it had informed the United Nations of its "intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement" -- a process that will take at least until 2020.

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The news came as swaths of southern Europe yesterday sweltered in a heatwave that has claimed several lives, cost billions in crop damage and is, scientists warned, a foretaste of worse to follow in coming decades.

Scientists meanwhile warned that deaths due to extreme weather in Europe could increase fifty-fold from an estimated 3,000 per year recently to 152,000 by the end of this century - if global warming is not reined in.

In Washington, the State Department said in a statement US  was still committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and engaging with the international community on combating climate change.

"We will continue to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through innovation and technology breakthroughs, and work with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and deploy renewable and other clean energy sources," said the statement.

It added: "The United States will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations and meetings... to protect US interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration.

"Such participation will include ongoing negotiations related to guidance for implementing the Paris Agreement."

Trump sparked widespread international criticism when he announced on June 1 that he had decided to pull the world's largest economy out of the painstakingly-negotiated accord, in line with his pledge to voters in last year's election.

While Trump said he was open to a renegotiation of the pact, the suggestion was swiftly shot down by fellow world leaders who said it was non-negotiable.

Speaking on a visit to Paris last month, Trump again raised the prospect of a change in policy by saying "something could happen" regarding US participation in the accord but gave no details.

Friday's statement reiterated that Trump was "open to re-engaging" in the pact if the US could "identify terms that are more favorable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers."

The United States is the world's second biggest producer of greenhouse gases after China and its withdrawal was a seen as a body blow to the Paris agreement.

The accord commits signatories to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, which is blamed for melting ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels and more violent weather events.

They vowed steps to keep the worldwide rise in temperatures "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times and to "pursue efforts" to hold the increase under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In Europe, at least five deaths in Italy and Romania have been attributed to the extreme conditions since the heatwave set in around the start of August.

Unusually high, sometimes unprecedented temperatures, are being recorded across an area spanning much of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), southern France, Italy, the Balkans and Hungary.

Thermometer mercury has regularly risen above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Farenheit) across the affected areas, exacerbating the impact of an extended drought and the lingering impact of a July heatwave which sparked wildfires that claimed 60 lives in Portugal.

Hospital admissions have spiked 15-20 percent in Italy, where at least three people have died.

In Romania, two deaths were linked to the weather, including a farmworker who collapsed after working in fields in the heat at Mogosesti in the northeast of the country.

Scientists meanwhile warned that deaths due to extreme weather in Europe could increase fifty-fold from an estimated 3,000 per year recently to 152,000 by the end of this century - if global warming is not reined in.

Southern Europe will suffer most and heatwaves would account for 99 percent of the deaths, according to research conducted for the European Commission and published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The conclusions were questioned by Korean peers of the researchers who suggested humans would become less vulnerable to extreme weather with experience of it.

Scientist warned last week that large parts of South Asia, home to a fifth of the world's population, could become unbearably hot by the end of this century.