DOWNTOWN — Environmental activists upset at President Donald Trump's exit from the Paris climate accord will protest the controversial withdrawal Friday afternoon.
Activist groups including the Sierra Club and Indivisible Chicago will lead the march beginning at 4:30 p.m. Friday. The march will start at Michigan and Wacker drives and proceed to the James R. Thompson Center, where protesters will publicly call on Gov. Bruce Rauner to implement a plan to lower Illinois' carbon emissions.
Trump announced Thursday that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, a 2015 accord between nearly every nation to reduce carbon emissions most scientists agree alter the planet's climate.
Trump believes the agreement hurts American businesses and jobs, saying Thursday he "was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
The United States would join war-torn Syria and Nicaragua, the latter of which doesn't think the accord has enough teeth to enforce its emissions targets, as the only nations in the world that have not signed the agreement.
Rauner has yet to take a public stance on Trump's Paris exit, but governors in California, New York and Washington agreed to pursue their own carbon emission accord. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement Thursday that Trump's decision creates a "false choice" between economic growth and preserving the environment.
More than 100 people say on Facebook they are attending the rally. Another 550 say they're interested.
The march will come a day before another anti-Trump protest: the March For Truth, one of many marches planned across the country calling for more "accountability and transparency" from elected officials. That march steps off at 11 a.m. Saturday at Federal Plaza, 50 W. Adams St.
