Trump Withdraws US From Key Climate Treaty

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from a bedrock climate treaty was slammed Thursday by the EU, which vowed to keep tackling the crisis with other nations.

The White House on Wednesday flagged the US exit from 66 global organizations and treaties — roughly half affiliated with the United Nations — it identified as “contrary to the interests of the United States.”

Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements.

The treaty adopted in 1992 is a global pact by nations to cooperate to drive down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

European Union climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said the UNFCCC “underpins global climate action” and brings nations together in the collective fight against the crisis.

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“The decision by the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter to retreat from it is regrettable and unfortunate,” Hoekstra said in a post on LinkedIn.

“We will unequivocally continue to support international climate research, as the foundation of our understanding and work. We will also continue to work on international climate cooperation.”

Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, deriding climate science as a “hoax.”

His administration sent no representative to the most recent UN climate summit in Brazil in November, which is held every year under the auspices of the UNFCCC.

Teresa Ribera, the EU’s vice-president for the clean transition, said the Trump administration “doesn’t care” about the environment, health or the suffering of people.

The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved later that year by the US Senate during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

“The US withdrawal from the UN climate framework is a heavy blow to global climate action, fracturing hard-won consensus,” Li Shuo, a climate expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told AFP.

The US Constitution allows presidents to enter treaties “provided two thirds of Senators present concur,” but it is silent on the process for withdrawing from them — a legal ambiguity that could invite court challenges.

Trump has already withdrawn from the landmark Paris climate accord since returning to office, just as he did during his first term from 2017–2021 in a move later reversed by his successor, Democratic president Joe Biden.

Exiting the underlying treaty could introduce additional legal uncertainty around any future US effort to rejoin.

Jean Su, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP: “Pulling out of the UNFCCC is a whole order of magnitude different from pulling out of the Paris Agreement.”

“It’s our contention that it’s illegal for the President to unilaterally pull out of a treaty that required two thirds of the Senate vote,” she continued. “We are looking at legal options to pursue that line of argument.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom, an outspoken critic of Trump who is widely seen as a presidential contender, said in a statement “our brainless president is surrendering America’s leadership on the world stage and weakening our ability to compete in the economy of the future — creating a leadership vacuum that China is already exploiting.”

The memo also directs the United States to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, alongside other climate-related organizations including the International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Oceans and UN Water.

As in his first term, Trump has also withdrawn the United States from UNESCO — the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — which Washington had rejoined under Biden.

Trump has likewise pulled the US out of the World Health Organization and sharply reduced foreign aid.

Other prominent bodies named in the memo include the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN Women, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement the organizations were driven by “progressive ideology” and were actively seeking to “constrain American sovereignty.”

“From DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) mandates to ‘gender equity’ campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project,” he said.

AFP