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West Lafayette's Dennis Joins 'Climate Mayors' Group Opposed To Trump

courtesy Mayors National Climate Change Agenda

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis has joined a growing group of municipal leaders opposed to Donald Trump’s removal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.

Dennis says he has joined a group of more than 200 so-called “Climate Mayors” nationwide, who’ve pledged their cities will uphold environmental regulations, even as the President seeks to escape them.

Dennis says he disagrees with assertions from Trump and many other Republicans that environmental rules are job-killers.

“You know, one of the biggest challenges that we have as local mayors – and one of the issues that keeps us up at night – is trying to make sure that we have a ready workforce for all the jobs that are being created nowadays," Dennis says. "And that, to me, is the big issue.”

He says he doesn't think his decision will dissuade companies from investing in West Lafayette.

“If people are interested in West Lafayette as a place to invest, they’re obviously interested for a lot more reasons than something that would be at a national level," the mayor says. "They would look at us at a pretty local level. And they know what’s good about West Lafayette and they know what they’re going to do insofar as their investment and they know how their investment’s going to track.”

The Climate Mayors group asks its members to have their cities catalog greenhouse gas emissions, develop goals for reducing them and publish a climate action plan to get the city to its targets.

Dennis joins the mayors of Gary, South Bend, Carmel, Bloomington and Fort Wayne in the group of Indiana executives opposed to the President’s decision.