SENIOR US government figures lined up yesterday to back President Donald Trump’s self-interested decision to pull out of the global fight against climate change.

Announcing his plan to withdraw from the Paris climate accord on Thursday, the billionaire demagogue said: “The agreement handicaps the US economy in order to win praise from foreign capitals and global activists.”

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

He quoted National Economic Research Associates estimates that the 2015 deal could cost 2.7 million US jobs by 2025.

He said same study showed that by 2040 iron and steel production would fall by 38 per cent, natural gas by 31 per cent and coal by 86 per cent.

“The Paris agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers them out of the USA to foreign countries,” he claimed. “This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage.”

Mr Trump said the US could try to re-enter the deal under more favourable terms or work to establish “an entirely new transaction.”

Only Nicaragua and Syria are not now party to the accord.

But the withdrawal process will take some three-and-a-half years — leaving it an issue in the 2020 presidential election.

Speaking on Fox News yesterday morning, US Vice-President Mike Pence said the deal “was a transfer of wealth from the most powerful economy in the world to other countries around the planet” — which he implied was a bad thing.

Asked whether Mr Trump believed in man-made global warming, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox: “The president believes in a clean environment.”

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the Republican president had “put families and jobs ahead of leftwing ideology and should be commended.”

Congress Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called it “a stunning abdication of American leadership and a grave threat to our planet’s future.”

And Greenpeace International, which organised hasty protests in Berlin and Madrid, branded the decision “morally bankrupt,” with executive director Jennifer Morgan saying the withdrawal would “turn America from a global climate leader into a flat-earth society of one.

“Global climate action is not a legal or political debate, it is an inescapable obligation to protect people and planet.”

And Greenpeace East Asia senior global policy officer Li Shuo warned the US: “Trump’s attempt to sabotage the global transition to a safer clean energy future won’t succeed.

“It will only corner the US and present China with an opportunity to reap the economic benefits of America’s withdrawal.”