“It (the Paris agreement) is not going to hurt the environmentalists, it’s going to hurt people in Asia and Africa and I think it’s profoundly immoral. What people there need is electricity you can afford. Prosperity, what’s wrong with that? This is an example of human folly.”

His comments came as Mr Trump said he would decide this week whether to withdraw the US from the 2015 agreement which has been signed by nearly 200 countries and was regarded by President Barack Obama as a key plank of his legacy.

It calls for holding the increase in the global average temperature this century to below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was openly frustrated by Mr Trump’s refusal to recommit the US to the accord at the meeting of G7 leaders last week.