The United States will withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), President Donald Trump said late Jan. 7 in a memo.
Pres. Trump said the US will also quit 64 other groups, treaties, or conventions that he says are “contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in,” or support.
Nearly half of the organizations the Trump administration intends to exit are housed within the United Nations (UN) and over a dozen are focused on renewable energy, climate change, conservation, climate science, and the environment.
The UNFCCC treaty, which underpins global efforts to combat climate change, was ratified by the US Senate and signed by President George H. W. Bush in October 1992. The US was the first industrialized nation to join the treaty and the only nation in the world to leave it.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading global scientific body studying climate change.
The withdrawals follow a review by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was directed by a Trump executive order to assess US involvement in international organizations.
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over US priorities,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance and ideological programs that conflict with US sovereignty and economic strength.”
Trump floated the idea of quitting the climate treaty during his first term, but he abandoned the effort. Since his second term, he has pressured other countries to abandon efforts to shift to renewable energy sources and instead buy more fossil fuels from the US.
Reactions
Scientific and environmental groups blasted Trump’s decision.
Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Trump administration’s “shameless lies about the scientific realities of climate change” will harm the US economy and its people. “This administration remains cruelly indifferent to the unassailable facts on climate while pandering to fossil fuel polluters,” she said in a statement.
The US division of the World Resources Institute described the move as a “strategic blunder” that will hamper the US’s ability to compete with China in the rapidly growing clean-energy technology market. “Walking away doesn’t just put America on the sidelines − it takes the US out of the arena entirely,” said Director David Widawsky.
Tom Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, said the Trump “deserves tremendous praise” for leaving the treaty. “Removing the US from the UN climate framework will accelerate a positive shift towards abandoning the destructive global climate framework,” Pyle said in a statement.
