Canada is appointing a climate change ambassador to save the Paris agreement

Canada is appointing a new ambassador responsible for climate change, as the United States readies to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Jennifer MacIntyre on Tuesday to serve as his advocate for Canada’s climate change priorities on the world stage, “including the successful implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

MacIntyre isn’t the first to hold the job, but she’ll be the first one to serve in the role since 2015, when the previous ambassador moved on to a new job. MacIntyre’s role however, appears to be a significant upgrade from its previous iteration.

The last ambassador to hold the post was merely Canada’s chief negotiator for climate treaties, like Paris and its predecessors. The new gig appears more geared towards advocacy, advising, and outreach.

Retooling the ambassadorship is undoubtedly a strategy aimed at the United States, which announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris agreement early in June. Since then, Trudeau has also been doing a phone tour of world leaders, talking up the deal. He more recently spoke to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in June — days ahead of his visit to the White House — where Paris was a subject of conversation.

Read more: Trump is abandoning the Paris climate deal

So far in June, the Paris agreement has come up during Trudeau’s phone conversations with French President Emmanuel Macron, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and U.S. President Donald Trump himself.

Macron has publicly rebuked Trump for his plan to pull out of the deal, but has taken a more conciliatory tone with the president in the last week, inviting him to Paris for Bastille Day festivities. Germany, meanwhile, will play host to the next United Nations climate summit, in November.

World leaders may yet have hope that Trump’s stated openness to renegotiate the deal is genuine — “We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. If we can’t, that’s fine,” he told reporters earlier this month. Depending on how he goes about things, it could take Washington three years before America has fully left the deal, although merely announcing its withdrawal will do a lot to undermine the deal’s success.

All of the work from Trudeau, Macron, and others appears to have had little impact thus far. On Tuesday afternoon, American Energy Secretary Rick Perry openly questioned the scientific basis for climate change.

“The climate is changing, it always has. Man, at this particular point in time, is having an effect — how much of an effect is what’s in debate, here,” Perry told reporters at a White House briefing. He added that the Paris deal was “nonsense.”