An open letter released at high-level UN climate talks in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh called on the US president-elect to back “continued US participation in the Paris Agreement, in order to provide the long-term direction needed to keep global temperature rise below 2C° or two degrees Celsius.

Trump has called global warming a “hoax”, and said he would “cancel” the agreement. Implementing the Paris deal would help businesses “turn the billions of dollars in existing low-carbon investments into the trillions of dollars the world needs to bring clean energy and prosperity to all,” the letter read.

DuPont, Gap Inc, Hewlett Packard, Hilton and Nike were among the multi-billion dollar companies supporting the appeal.

Diplomats, CEOs and observers at the UN talks tasked with implementing the far reaching Paris accord were stunned by Trump’s ascendency to the White House, which threatens to destabilise a still-fragile consensus decades in the making.

—AFP