Trump Is Leaving U.N. Environmental Bodies. What That Means for the Climate

On Wednesday night, President Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a landmark global treaty that sets a legal framework for international negotiations to address climate change.  The move comes after the Trump Administration asked the State Department to review the country’s involvement in various international organizations last February. The result is that the president has now withdrawn the United States from a total 66 international organisations, including 31 United Nations entities. Other groups included U.N. Oceans, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the International Renewable Energy Agency. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In doing so, the United States has become the first country to turn its back on the framework it played a pivotal role in creating in the early 1990s. “It’s a terrible signal of the U.S.’s commitment to international climate action,” says Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director of international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Russia, Iran, Venezuela, countries that are not super strong climate leaders are still party to the agreement. So the U.S. will be the only big outlier in the global international conference.” Given that the Trump Administration has already rolled back a number of climate initiatives, experts say that leaving the UNFCCC is unlikely to have a tangible impact.  “The federal government, over the last 11 plus months, has already done everything they can to put the brakes on energy transition and climate action,” says Max Holmes, president and CEO…

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