Paris climate deal a 'dead letter' for incoming administration says ex-head of Trump transition team

The Donald Trump administration is likely to ignore the Paris Climate Agreement, drill in the Arctic and give the green light to three controversial pipeline projects, the man who headed up the US president-elect's transitional team has said.

Mike McKenna was in charge of the energy transition team for Trump, and has returned to being a lobbyist.

The Paris Agreement sets the goal of limiting global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels, although it does not set individual targets for economies.

McKenna told Channel 4's Dispatches programme that withdrawing from or ignoring the deal would amount to the same thing.

"I don't want to say it's a dead letter as far as the United States is concerned, but it's pretty close to a dead letter," he said.

Candidate to head the Department of Energy, Rick Perry, has described climate change as a "contrived and phony mess". Since he quit as Texas governor in 2015, the programme says he has earned more than $500,000 (£414,000) from two pipeline companies including Energy Transfer Partners, which owns the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

McKenna said that Trump would give the go-ahead to the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Keystone XL and the Alberta Clipper. "Under the United States law, they're all on a posture that they can be approved by a president more or less immediately, and I think that's what's going to happen."

On the Arctic, he said that the administration would "try to encourage some exploration and production out there".

McKenna told the programme, which is due for broadcast on British television on Monday (16 January 2017) that the Clean Power Plan to limit carbon-dioxide pollution from power plants would be ended.

"It's impossible to imagine anything else would happen, you know. There's been some lack of clarity on some things, um, inside the federal government domain, all the other things we're talking about, but on this thing the president-elect has been remarkably consistent and direct," McKenna said.