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 a key international agreement to combat the climate crisis, solidifying the United States’ complete isolation from global efforts to combat dangerously rising temperatures.
Inside presidential memorandum In a statement released Wednesday, Trump said he was withdrawing from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, saying they were “counter to the interests of the United States.”
The UNFCCC agreement forms the basis for international cooperation in tackling the climate crisis and has been adopted by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate approved the treaty in October 1992.
But Trump has routinely derided climate science as a “hoax” and “hoax” and has actively disrupted clean energy projects and other climate policies as president; He has tried to force the United States and other countries to rely on fossil fuels, which have led to devastating heat waves, storms, droughts and conflicts that endanger billions of people around the world.
“This is a short-sighted, shameful and stupid decision,” said Gina McCarthy, a senior climate adviser in Joe Biden’s White House.
“As the only country in the world not part of the UNFCCC agreement, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global cooperation. This administration is losing our nation’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies and decisions that will improve our economy and protect us from the costly disasters ravaging our country.”
Natural Resources Defense Council President Manish Bapna said Trump’s decision to withdraw from the UNFCCC was a “forced mistake” and “self-defeating decision” as it would further hinder the United States’ ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world’s emerging clean energy technology industries.
“As the Trump administration abandons the United States’ global leadership, the rest of the world continues to turn to cleaner energy sources and take climate action,” Bapna said.
“The Trump administration is leaving the trillions of dollars of investment brought about by the clean energy transition to countries willing to follow the science and adopt the cleanest, cheapest energy sources.”
Underscoring the administration’s hostility to any measures to deal with a climate that is currently warmer than at any other point in human civilization, the White House statement says the United States will withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s top climate science body, as well as other international environmental organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Last year, Trump said the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, under which countries agreed to limit dangerous global warming, while the administration refused to send a delegation to UN climate talks in Brazil.
Because the UNFCCC treaty has been ratified by the Senate, it is unclear whether Trump could unilaterally revoke it or whether a future president could rejoin the framework without another vote in the Senate. “Allowing this lawless movement to continue could lock the United States out of climate diplomacy forever,” said Jean Su, director of energy justice at the Center for Biological Diversity.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: a statement It was stated that the agreements that the administration canceled on Wednesday were “mostly dominated by progressive ideology and disconnected from national interests.”
The climate crisis is actually a matter of scientific consensus and is already causing measurable and increasing damage to economies and people’s lives. A record number of major extreme weather disasters in the United States are forcing insurers to flee states, damaging the nation’s real estate market. Scientists have warned that global temperatures will exceed pre-agreed thresholds, triggering worsening disasters.
“On the one-year anniversary of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles communities, robbing dozens of lives, thousands of homes and millions of people’s sense of safety, Trump is making clear that he has no interest in protecting Americans from the rapidly accelerating impacts of the worsening climate crisis on our health and safety,” said Loren Blackford, executive director of the Sierra Club. “This is not leadership, this is cowardice.”
Former US vice-president and climate activist Al Gore told the Guardian: “The Trump Administration has been turning its back on the climate crisis from day one, pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, dismantling America’s scientific infrastructure, restricting access to greenhouse gas emissions data and ending investments needed to transition to clean energy.”
“They did this at the behest of the oil industry so billionaires could make more money while polluting our planet and endangering people in America and around the world,” Gore said.
Other organizations and organizations from which the US will leave include the Carbon-Free Energy Convention, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Atlantic Cooperation Partnership, the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies, and the International Lead and Zinc Working Group.
The State Department said additional investigations were ongoing.
