Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the US from the world’s most important climate treaty, as well as from dozens of other international organizations, as the president intensifies efforts to upend decades of global cooperation tackling rising temperatures.
In a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday evening, Trump said the US would withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and 65 additional UN and other multilateral groups, mostly linked to the environment, renewable energy, development, education and the promotion of democracy and human rights.
They include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global body of climate scientists, the International Trade Centre, the UN Population Fund and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN’s climate arm, said the US was “instrumental in creating” both the UNFCCC and the Paris agreement, adding its departure was a “colossal own goal” that would leave the country “less secure and less prosperous.”
The 1992 UNFCCC treaty underpins international cooperation to deal with climate change. The latest announcement comes almost a year after Trump, who last year branded climate change a “con job,” announced that he would pull the US from the 2015 Paris climate agreement for the second time. During his first term, the US became the first and so far only country to withdraw from the accord, but Joe Biden rejoined.
The White House said the decision to pull out from a total of 66 international organizations, including 31 UN entities, was intended to save US taxpayers money and advance Trump’s “America First” agenda.
“American taxpayers have spent billions on these organizations with little return, while they often criticize US policies, advance agendas contrary to our values, or waste taxpayer dollars,” the White House said in a factsheet issued alongside the executive order.