LONDON — The United States warned last week it would leave the world’s most important energy research organization unless it ditched climate change — but it’s already two years behind on its membership payments, according to two officials.
The International Energy Agency has been under increasing pressure from Republicans and the Trump administration to rewire its influential annual report on the future of global energy to exclude scenarios in which the world moves off coal, oil and gas — the primary drivers of global warming.
The IEA has tried to accommodate those views by giving greater prominence to scenarios that include more fossil fuel use — and therefore more fires, floods and extreme weather.
Despite this, last week at a summit of the member governments, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright threatened to leave the IEA if it did not bend to those demands.
