Fox & Friends hosted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and allowed him to uncritically push the falsehood that China and India have no obligations to cut their emissions until 2030 under the Paris climate agreement.

On the April 13 edition of Fox & Friends, host Brian Kilmeade asked Pruitt if the U.S. was “on the path to getting out of” the Paris agreement. Pruitt answered that he believed the U.S. needed to exit the agreement because “it’s a bad deal for America,” adding, “China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030” -- a false claim that right-wing media have repeatedly made.

What the Fox & Friends hosts failed to point out was that 2030 is the year by which China and India must meet their emissions reduction goals -- a target that clearly would require earlier action. In order to meet their emissions targets, India is aiming to get 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, a proposal that one climate expert called “nothing less than gargantuan.” Similarly, China plans to increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy from 11.2 percent to 20 percent above the 2005 level and “lower its emissions per unit of GDP within the range of 60 to 65 percent below the 2005 level by 2030.” China is also set to roll out a national cap-and-trade program this year to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

From the April 13 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends:

BRIAN KILMEADE: All right, let’s also talk about the Paris agreement. Are we on the path to getting out of that?

SCOTT PRUITT: Well, Paris is something that we need to really look at closely because it’s something we need to exit in my opinion. It's a bad deal for America. It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We front-loaded all of our costs.

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): What's your biggest objection to the Paris agreement?

PRUITT: That. That America was put last. That the previous administration went into Paris and said that China and India had no obligations until 2030, and America was going to cost itself jobs as it relates to the obligations there. People who say that it's not enforceable -- every meeting I’ve had with my counterparts from Germany, Canada, and others, the first question they ask me is, “What are you going to do to comply with Paris?” And so what that means is contracting our economy to serve and really satisfy Europe and China and India. They are polluting far more than we are. We’re at pre-1994 levels with respect to our CO2 emissions.

KILMEADE: So is it you tell them, “Listen, we’re not going to do that.”

PRUITT: That’s exactly right.