Donald Trump has defended pulling his country from the Paris Climate Agreement during his presidency, calling the pact "a rip-off of the United States."
"I ended it because I didn't want to waste that money, because they treat us horribly," Trump said while facing off against US President Joe Biden in a first televised debate ahead of November's presidential election.
The international climate treaty was a "disaster," Trump said.
Biden rejected the claims, stressing that the US would only be able to fight climate change as party to the agreement. He added there wasn't "any indication" that Trump was "concerned about pollution and about climate."
Biden has made the fight against climate change a priority.
Trump withdrew from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement right at the beginning of his term of office in 2017 and is considered a denier of man-made global warming.
In one of his first acts after taking office in 2021, Biden re-entered the United States to the climate accord.