House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Saturday that she will lead a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to the United Nations conference on climate change this upcoming month, USA today reports.
The UN’s COP25 environmental summit will be held in Madrid from December 2-13.
The Madrid trip is the most recent effort by House Democrats to maintain and keep alive the Paris climate accord while Trump is in office. The delegation includes 14 other lawmakers including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of the most outspoken senators on climate change.
In May, Pelosi led House Democrats to pass a bill compelling Trump to stay in the agreement, but the measure was not taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate.
In a statement, Pelosi stated that “It is a privilege to accompany a high-level Congressional delegation to Spain to combat the existential threat of our time: the climate crisis.”
The delegation includes Pelosi and 14 other lawmakers including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of the most outspoken senators on climate change.
“Taking action to protect our planet is a public health decision for clean air and clean water for our children, an economic decision for creating the green, good-paying jobs of the future, a national security decision to address resource competition and climate migration and also a moral decision to be good stewards of God’s creation and pass a sustainable, healthy planet to the next generation,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Protests in Chile, where the conference was originally scheduled earlier this fall, forced the United Nations to move the proceedings to the Spanish capital.
The Trump administration notified the UN on November 4th, the earliest date the United States can pull out, that it would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The U.S. is now the only country to pull out of the pact. President Trump has claimed the Paris agreement puts too little pressure of reducing emissions on China and other developing nations.
The withdrawal process from the agreement takes a year, so it will not become official until shortly after the 2020 presidential election.
The Administration has designated a small group of diplomats, but no political appointees to represent the U.S. at the COP25, according to the State Department. The statement reiterated the U.S. leaving the agreement.