Nikki Haley, the United States’ Permanent Representative to the UN, said that President Donald Trump does believe in climate change, and that humans have a role in it.

The Indian-American lawmaker revealed in an interview on CNN that aired on Saturday night, that despite his decision to withdraw the US from the historic Paris climate accord, Trump had reservations about the impact of the move.

Trump “knows that it’s changing and that the US has to be responsible for it and that’s what we’re going to do,” she continued, adding that withdrawing from the Paris agreement will not change the country’s commitment to curbing climate change.

“Just because the US got out of a club doesn’t mean we aren’t going to care about the environment,” she said.

When asked why the US pulled out of the climate agreement, Haley blamed former President Barack Obama for agreeing to regulations that were “too onerous”, too strict and ultimately unachievable.

“The regulations from the Paris agreement were disadvantaging our companies,” she said, adding “I knew that as a governor. The jobs were not attainable as long as we lived under those regulations. It was not possible to meet the goals had we attempted to,” she added.

Haley’s comments are the closest acknowledgement by an administrative authority since Trump took office that the President -who has called climate change a “hoax” on multiple occasions - believes global warming is occurring and humanity has a role in it.

Haley told CNN that Trump will always have America’s best interests at heart, including what he does in regard to protecting the environment.

“The rest of the world wanted to tell us how to do it,” she said. “But we’ll do it under our own terms,” she insisted.

Trump said on Thursday that he was formally withdrawing the US from the deal, fulfilling a pledge from his controversy laden presidential campaign.

The move was slammed by Canada, the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the UN as well as Barack Obama, his predecessor at the Oval Office..

The country under the Obama administration in 2015 had pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28% by 2025 as a part of the agreement.