Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US\u2019s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures.<\/p>\n
In a presidential memorandum<\/a> issued on Wednesday, Trump withdrew from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, calling them \u201ccontrary to the interests of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international cooperation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992.<\/p>\n Trump has, however, routinely ridiculed climate science as a \u201cscam\u201d and a \u201choax\u201d and has actively hobbled clean energy projects and other climate policies as president, attempting to force the US and other countries to stay wedded to the fossil fuels that are driving disastrous heatwaves, storms, droughts and conflicts that imperils billions of people around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a shortsighted, embarrassing and foolish decision,\u201d said Gina McCarthy, who was a top climate adviser to Joe Biden\u2019s White House.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration<\/a> is throwing away decades of US climate change leadership and global collaboration. This administration is forfeiting our country\u2019s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump\u2019s decision to exit the UNFCCC is an \u201cunforced error\u201d and \u201cself-defeating\u201d as it will further hamper the US\u2019s ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world\u2019s burgeoning clean energy technology industries.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the Trump administration is abdicating the United States of America\u2019s global leadership, the rest of the world is continuing to shift to cleaner power sources and take climate action,\u201d Bapna said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration is ceding the trillions of dollars in investment that the clean energy transition brings to nations willing to follow the science and embrace the cleanest, cheapest sources of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n Underscoring the administration\u2019s hostility to any measure to deal with a climate that is now hotter than at any point in human civilization, the White House memo also states that the US will pull out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN\u2019s top climate science body, as well as an assortment of other international environmental organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.<\/p>\n Last year, Trump said the US would exit the Paris climate deal, in which countries agreed to limit dangerous global heating, while the administration also declined to send a delegation to UN climate talks in Brazil.<\/p>\n As the UNFCCC treaty was ratified by the Senate, it is unclear whether Trump can unilaterally scrap it, or whether a future president will be able to rejoin the framework without a further Senate vote. \u201cLetting this lawless move stand could shut the US out of climate diplomacy forever,\u201d said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.<\/p>\n