President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from the world’s overarching treaty on climate change in a move that escalates his attempts to reverse years of global negotiations toward addressing rising temperatures.
The announcement to sever ties with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change came as Trump quit dozens of international organizations that the White House said no longer serve U.S. interests by promoting what it called radical climate policies and other issues.
Trump has pressured other countries to abandon their carbon-cutting measures, and the move appears to be his latest attempt to destabilize global climate cooperation.
The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of rising climate pollution. It has universal participation. The U.S. was the first industrialized nation to join the treaty following its ratification under former President George H.W. Bush — and it will be the only nation ever to leave it.
The move marks an intensifying effort by Trump to topple climate efforts compared to his first term, when he decided against quitting the treaty.
“Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength,” stated a White House fact sheet.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the 66 organizations the U.S. is leaving seek to “constrain American sovereignty,” referring to gender equity campaigns and “climate orthodoxy.”
“President Trump is clear: It is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat, and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it,” Rubio said in a statement. “The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over.”
The move comes as Trump tears down U.S. climate policies amid the hottest decade ever recorded and threatens other nations for pursuing measures to address global warming, which Trump has called a hoax and a “con job.”
The U.S. did not send a delegation to Brazil for the COP30 climate talks late last year. Instead, administration officials have been working to strike fossil fuel deals with other nations or, in one case, grab their resources using military force. Trump captured Venezuela’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, in an assault using U.S. commandos Saturday and said he would take control of the country’s vast oil resources.
The plan to leave the UNFCCC stems from Trump’s order last February requiring Rubio to identify treaties and international organizations that “are contrary to the interests of the United States” and recommend withdrawing from them.
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 pact that’s underpinned by the UNFCCC. That withdrawal will take effect later this month.
“This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator under former President Barack Obama and who now leads a coalition of state and business leaders known as America Is All In. “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration.”
The latest blow
Since taking office for a second time a year ago, the Trump administration has tried to undermine U.S. and international climate efforts by shuttering offices throughout the federal government and threatening to unleash tariffs on countries that support carbon taxes on shipping emissions.
He has overseen a wide-ranging campaign to erase regulations governing climate pollution at power plants and in cars, and his administration recruited high-profile climate contrarians to write a report that promoted misinformation about the tenets of climate science.
Those moves amounted to whiplash for American climate policy. Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. established an array of climate regulations on industry and signed onto an international agreement to phase down fossil fuels. That was built on presidential efforts — by Republicans and Democrats — to lower greenhouse gas emissions over at least three decades.
“We wouldn’t have been where we were with the original framework convention and we wouldn’t be where we are with the landmark Paris Agreement without very active U.S. leadership,” said Todd Stern, who served as U.S. climate envoy when the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.
Former climate officials said Trump’s moves on Wednesday weren’t surprising, given his statements denigrating climate science. But they were no less scathing in their criticism.
“Of all the wreckage Donald Trump is leaving in his wake, this one could be amongst the most consequential and damaging, particularly for future generations,” said John Podesta, who coordinated climate policy under Obama and Biden.
Green groups warned that the move would have long-term consequences.
“To be the first major economy to abandon this effort would set American families and businesses back in the global energy transition — leaving them to breathe dirtier air, face worse health outcomes, pay higher energy bills, and miss out on the economic gains that come with leading the shift to a clean energy future,” Amanda Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.
David Widawsky, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, called withdrawing from the UNFCCC “a strategic blunder that gives away American advantage for nothing in return.”
Option to reenter
The U.S. Senate ratified the U.N. framework 34 years ago, making it a rare environmental pact that was supported unanimously. That could complicate any future president’s efforts to rejoin the treaty.
Some legal experts say the Senate’s consent does not operate in perpetuity after the U.S. leaves a treaty. Others argue that if a president can unilaterally leave a treaty, a future president could rejoin it without a new vote.
“Otherwise, you’re just handing this huge amount of power to a president to forever cancel the act of the Senate,” Jean Galbraith, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has written about treaties, told POLITICO’s E&E News last year.
Sue Biniaz, a former deputy climate envoy under John Kerry, said: “The U.S. should be the global leader on the climate issue for economic, environmental, and geopolitical reasons, not surrendering leadership to others.”
But others say the treaty has lost relevance.
“The framework convention is a joke,” said George David Banks, who served as Trump’s international climate adviser during his first administration.
He said leaving it could force the international community to reexamine its process for cooperating on climate change and what he sees as “flaws” in the convention. He pointed to its tendency to isolate climate issues from energy or economic officials who are more central to policy levers.
Even so, Banks has pushed for the U.S. to remain involved in international climate discussions to ensure that global climate policy doesn’t “undermine the economic value of U.S. fossil fuels.”
Trump also announced Wednesday that he would leave the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a host of other important international organizations tied to climate and clean energy.
“Walking away doesn’t make the science disappear, it only leaves people across the United States, policymakers, and businesses flying in the dark at the very moment when credible climate information is most urgently needed,” said Delta Merner at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
According to the terms of the treaty, withdrawal from the UNFCCC will take effect a year after the U.S. submits a request to the United Nations to leave the treaty.
Zack Colman contributed to this report.
