SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Latest on California climate summit (all times local):
2:30 p.m.
California Gov. Jerry Brown says the state plans to launch its “own damn satellite” into orbit to address climate change.
The man famously dubbed “Gov. Moonbeam” said Friday the state is working with a San Francisco-based earth imaging company on a satellite to track climate-change causing pollutants.
Brown said the company Planet Labs has launched 150 satellites.
The Democratic governor announced the project at a climate change summit in San Francisco he organized.
Brown foreshadowed the announcement in a December 2016 speech a month after Trump’s election, saying California would launch its own satellite if the then-president-elect followed through on his threat to scrap NASA’s climate research program.
Chicago columnist Mike Royko gave Brown the Moonbeam moniker in 1976, saying that Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote.”
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12:20 p.m.
Former Vice President Al Gore says a new president can, with 30 days’ notice, get the United States back into the international climate agreement that President Trump pulled of last year.
Attendees at a climate conference in San Francisco gave Gore a loud ovation when he told them if a new president is elected in 2020 that person could get the United States back into the Paris Agreement. President Trump announced in June 2017 that he was withdrawing the United States from an agreement signed by 195 countries pledging to combat climate change.
Gore, a Democrat, also criticized Trump for denying the death toll from last year’s hurricane in Puerto Rico was nearly 3,000 people.
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10:45 a.m.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry is criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris climate accord.
Kerry on Friday called Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Paris deal the “single greatest act of irresponsibility of any President of the United States at any time.”
Trump said the international agreement was unfair to the United States and would hurt the economy.
Kerry signed the agreement to combat climate change on behalf of the United States while serving as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.
Kerry spoke in San Francisco at the Global Climate Action Summit organized by fellow Democrat, California Gov. Jerry Brown.
His comments came a day after Trump blasted Kerry on Twitter for meeting with high-level members of the Iranian government.
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