President Donald Trump's administration is pushing coal and nuclear energy as solutions to global warming during a climate change conference
"Without a question fossil fuels will continue to be used," George David Banks of the National Economic Council said at the beginning of a panel at the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Tuesday, according to Time magazine.
"We would argue that it's in the global interest to make sure that when fossil fuels are used it as clean and efficient as possible."
He added, "this panel is controversial only if we chose to bury our heads in the sand," according to The New York Times.
Demonstrators interrupted the panel, singing "Proud to Be an American" with lyrics that mocked the Trump officials.
"So you claim to be an American, but we see right through your greed," they sang, according to Time.
"Promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit," former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is in attendance at the conference, told the Times.
On Saturday, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced that the former mayor and California Gov. Jerry Brown have launched "a new initiative to compile and quantify the actions of states, cities and businesses in the United States to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions," according to the Paris Climate Agreement that Trump has repeatedly criticized.
"We are not trying to replace the U.S. State Department," Dan Firger of Bloomberg Philanthropies told TIME. "Instead we're trying to communicate to the rest of the word the range of action . . . we've been forced to make some lemonade out of lemons."
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