Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., pledged his support of President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement Thursday.
In an emailed statement, Johnson reacted to Trump's White House announcement.
"The benefit of the Paris agreement was suspect from the start," Johnson said. "The Copenhagen Consensus used the UN's own model to estimate the deal would reduce warming by at most 0.3 degrees by 2100.
"Instead of spending hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to barely move the needle on global temperatures in a hypothetical distant future, the world's limited resources would be better spent providing safe drinking water, preventing malaria, and taking other measures to alleviate human suffering in the here and now."
Johnson echoed other Republicans in backing Trump's move. Former President Barack Obama, who signed the agreement last April, criticized Trump's decision but expressed hope that states and businesses will follow the accord's guidelines anyway.