During the United Nation’s annual climate change meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, President of France and keynote speaker, François Hollande, announced that the French Republic will cease to use all coal-fired power plants by the year 2023.

Hollande also used the platform and his time before the UN delegates to praise president Barack Obama for his efforts that “[were] crucial in achieving the Paris agreement,” while at the same time subtly denouncing president-elect Trump by adding that the agreement is “irreversible.”

Hollande continued, reminding delegates that the groundbreaking pact of the Paris agreement stipulates that the world reach “carbon neutrality by 2050” and that coal will not be part of France’s mix of energy resources within the next six to seven years.

France’s declaration is accompanied by shared sentiments from the other nations involved in the pact, as they plan to continue with the Paris agreement, with or without America’s involvement. Germany has said it hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent by the year 2050, and the United Kingdom has pledged to shut down all of its coal-fired plants by the year 2025.

France, who receives about 75% of its energy needs from nuclear power plants, is already at the top of the list of nations who use low-carbon energy resources. In fact, the country now produces so much energy that it is able to export a good amount of it to neighboring nations, bringing in about $3.2 billion each year.

President-elect Donald Trump, and his crack team of anti-environmentalists, stand to gain quite a bit of money from coal and oil; not to mention, they deny any truth to the idea of climate change (even though it’s well known that burning coal produces more carbon dioxide and toxins than burning any other resource).

Fortunately for the rest of the planet, coal use on a world level has been decreasing dramatically. This is due to renewable energy sources being more prominent and less expensive, and the fact that the damage being done to the world by burning coal is becoming too extreme to ignore.

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