Washington: US President Barack Obama has slammed the Republican Party and its presidential candidates for opposing the historic Paris agreement on climate change, saying they were the only major party in the world to deny climate change.
"Right now, the American Republican Party is the only major party that I can think of in the advanced world that effectively denies climate change. I mean, it's an outlier," Obama told reporters yesterday at a White House news conference.
"Many of the key signatories to this deal, the architects of this deal come from centre-right governments. Even the far-right parties in many of these countries -- they may not like immigrants, for example, but they admit the science tells us we've got to do something about climate change," he said.
Obama said the GOP's stance on climate change might be a short-term strategy to gain traction in the primaries, but wouldn't yield results for them in the long run.
Obama also expressed confidence that a fellow Democrat would succeed him as the next president in 2017.
"We will have a strong Democratic nominee. I think that a Democratic nominee shall win. I think I will have a Democratic successor," he said.
Obama said he would campaign very hard to make that a reality.
"For a whole variety of reasons -- because they're far more likely to share my fundamental vision about where America should go," the US President said.
