Outrage as Trump withdraws from key UN climate treaty along with dozens of international organisations | Donald Trump
Donald Trump sparked outrage by announcing that the United States would withdraw from the core international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing America’s complete isolation from the global effort to confront dangerous escalation in temperatures.
In a presidential memorandum released Wednesday, Trump withdrew from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, calling them “contrary to the interests of the United States.”
The UNFCCC treaty provides the foundation for international cooperation to address the climate crisis and has been accepted by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992.
However, Trump has regularly ridiculed climate science as a “scam” and “hoax” and has actively obstructed clean energy projects and other climate policies as president, attempting to force the United States and other countries to remain committed to fossil fuels that cause disastrous heat waves, storms, droughts and conflicts that imperil billions of people around the world.
“This is a short-sighted, embarrassing and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy, who was a top climate adviser in Joe Biden’s White House.
“As the only country in the world not part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is wasting decades of American leadership on climate change and global collaboration. This administration is losing our country’s ability to influence billions of dollars in investments, policies and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country.”
Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s decision to leave the UNFCCC is an “unforced error” and “counterproductive” as it will further hamper the United States’ ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world’s booming clean energy technology industries.
“While the Trump administration abdicates global leadership to the United States of America, the rest of the world continues to turn to cleaner energy sources and take climate action,” Bapna said.
“The Trump administration is ceding the billions of dollars of investment that the clean energy transition brings to nations willing to follow the science and adopt the cleanest, cheapest energy sources. »
Underscoring the administration’s hostility to any measures to address a climate that is hotter today than at any other time in human civilization, the White House memo also says the United States will withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.’s leading climate science body, as well as a host of other international environmental organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Climate Change. nature conservation.
Last year, Trump said the United States would leave the Paris climate accord, in which countries agreed to limit dangerous global warming, while the administration also refused to send a delegation to U.N. climate talks in Brazil.
With the UNFCCC treaty having been ratified by the Senate, it is unclear whether Trump will be able to abandon it unilaterally, or whether a future president can re-enter the framework without a new Senate vote. “Letting this lawless decision stand could exclude the United States from climate diplomacy forever,” said Jean Su, director of energy justice at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said in a statement that the agreements abandoned by the administration on Wednesday are “often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests.”
The climate crisis is in fact a matter of scientific consensus and is already having a measurable and growing impact on economies and people’s lives. In the United States, a record number of major extreme weather disasters are forcing insurers to flee states, weakening the country’s real estate market. Scientists have warned that global temperatures could rise above previously agreed thresholds, triggering even worse disasters.
“On the one-year anniversary of the wildfires that stole dozens of lives, thousands of homes, and the sense of safety of millions by burning Los Angeles communities to ashes, Trump is making it clear that he has no interest in protecting Americans from the rapidly growing impacts on our health and safety of the worsening climate crisis,” said Loren Blackford, executive director of the Sierra Club. “That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice.”
Al Gore, former US vice president and climate activist, told the Guardian: “The Trump administration has turned its back on the climate crisis since day one, withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement, dismantling US science infrastructure, limiting access to data on greenhouse gas emissions and ending essential investments in the clean energy transition. »
“They did this at the behest of the oil industry, so that billionaires could make even more money while polluting our planet and endangering people in America and around the world,” Gore said.
Other organizations and agencies that the United States will leave include the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies, and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
The State Department said additional reviews were underway.
