President Donald Trump looks poised to withdraw from the Paris climate accord this week, which would likely infuriate supporters of the treaty while pleasing many Republican members of Congress and other hard-line conservatives. “Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing the harmful energy policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era,” said Patrick Morrisey, attorney general of West Virginia. “The Paris agreement is a symbol of the Obama administration’s ‘Washington knows best’ approach to governing.” News of the looming departure quickly drew the ire of international and domestic political leaders who fear the potentially devastating impacts of global warming. The United States is the second-largest emitter of climate pollution behind China and ahead of Russia and India. Backers of the Paris standards for greenhouse-gas emissions believe that if Trump pulls his support for the promised reductions, it will unravel other countries’ commitments to the groundbreaking pact. “This disastrous decision would cede American leadership at the very time when we should be in the driver’s seat leading the clean energy revolution to reduce air and water pollution,” Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, said in a statement Wednesday. “President Trump is sending a clear signal to the rest of the world that they should look to China and others for energy innovation, not the United States.” Climate scientists have said the targets set in the Paris accord would likely need to be strengthened over time to avert serious consequence from global warming, such as increased flooding, drought and famine. “The Paris agreement provided a great opportunity for the U.S. and the world to wean out of the fossil fuel economy and step into the future with a renewable economy,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientists with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, an internationally renowned hub of global warming research. “U.S. pulling out of the Paris accord would be a major setback for the world.” In the past week, a number of global leaders, including Pope Francis, have urged Trump not to walk away…