North Korea blasts Trump as 'silly,' 'ignorant' over Paris Accord withdrawal
North Korea is a party to the Paris Accord.
— -- Short-sighted, silly, selfish, and dangerous.
That's how President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord is being described -- but not by the European leaders who urged Trump to stay in the agreement or the Pacific island nations that are demanding action as rising sea levels threaten their coastlines.
Those are the words of North Korea.
The regime in Pyongyang issued a scorching statement through its official news agency KCNA on Tuesday, blasting Trump's decision that, it said, comes "at the cost of the entire planet."
"The selfish act of the U.S. does not only have grave consequences for the international efforts to protect the environment, but poses great danger to other areas as well," said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The statement goes on to criticize Trump's "America first" foreign policy, and calls the withdrawal, "the height of egoism and moral vacuum seeking only their own well-being ... a short-sighted and silly decision ignorant of the fact that the protection of the global environment is in their own interests."
While the White House has refused to say whether or not Trump believes that climate change is real, Kim Jong Un's regime makes clear its position.
"Global warming is one of the gravest challenges the humankind is facing today," it said.
North Korea signed the historic accord, and in withdrawing, the U.S. joins only two other countries who stand outside it -- Nicaragua, which refused because it believed the agreement did not go far enough, and the only country that may be more isolated diplomatically than North Korea: Syria.