Trump pulls U.S. from UN climate framework, experts warn of global damage

The Trump administration on Wednesday began the process of withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the principal body through which nations negotiate, monitor, and enforce agreements to limit global warming. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the move, which also included simultaneous withdrawals from a U.N. climate science panel, a biodiversity initiative, the Green Climate Fund, and several other international environmental collaborations. Climate experts said the action goes further than Trump’s earlier withdrawals from the Paris Agreement.

The UNFCCC, negotiated in Brazil in 1992, championed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, and ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate, forms the legal foundation that permitted subsequent presidents to join and rejoin the Paris Agreement without additional Senate approval. Scientists warned that U.S. withdrawal removes a major actor from global emissions-reduction efforts at a moment when Earth is approaching the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold the Paris accord established.

Scope of the action

The UNFCCC withdrawal represents a larger step than Trump’s 2017 and 2025 departures from the Paris Agreement, experts said. The framework convention is the parent structure under which the Paris accord was negotiated; departing it closes off the legal pathway that Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden used to rejoin the Paris deal without returning to the Senate for ratification.

“This is the gateway to the preeminent international forum for combatting climate change,” said Jean Galbraith, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and international treaties expert.

Alongside the UNFCCC withdrawal, the administration also pulled the United States from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the U.N.’s principal climate science body — as well as a biodiversity initiative and the Green Climate Fund, which helps poorer nations address warming.

Administration rationale

Rubio, in announcing the withdrawals, said the Trump administration “has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”

Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which represents industries that emit much of the heat-trapping gases, said “removing the U.S. from the U.N. climate framework will accelerate a positive shift towards abandoning the destructive global climate framework.”

Scientific reaction

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said the withdrawal is “more fundamental and more damaging” than earlier U.S. climate retreats.

“The U.S. turns its back against science, against global collaboration, against any kind of action on climate change,” Rockstrom said. “It is a more serious step definitely. The world loses a lot and it is very damaging.”

Scientists said the action comes at a critical juncture. Earth is approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming since pre-industrial times — the internationally agreed threshold set in the Paris accord. Rockstrom said the world needs to begin reducing emissions globally by 5% per year.

“It’s our last chance. And exactly at that moment, the biggest player in the world steps out of the game,” Rockstrom said.

Adelle Thomas, climate adaptation director of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a vice chair of the U.N. climate science panel the administration is leaving, said “it will mean more warming because the U.S. is not going to be fulfilling its obligations of reducing their emissions.” The Biden administration had pledged to cut U.S. emissions by 61% to 66% by 2035.

Since 1850, the United States has put more than 480 billion tons (440 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the world’s historic emissions of a gas that remains in the atmosphere for more than a century, according to scientists at the Global Carbon Project.

Global reaction

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and a member of the group of retired leaders called The Elders, said “we really have no time and it is so unbelievably stupid at one level and reckless for the Trump administration to be taking the steps that they are taking.”

Former Secretary of State John Kerry called Trump’s action “a gift to China and a get-out-of-jail free card to countries and polluters who want to avoid responsibility.”

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said the withdrawal will hurt the United States directly. “It will mean less affordable energy, food, transport and insurance for American households and businesses, as renewables keep getting cheaper than fossil fuels, as climate-driven disasters hit American crops, businesses and infrastructure harder each year,” Stiell said.

World leaders have argued that the United States risks being left out of what they describe as a growing global transition away from coal, oil, and natural gas toward cheaper solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources.

Historical context and reversibility

The UNFCCC was the first major international environmental commitment championed by a U.S. president from either party. Bush negotiated it in Brazil in 1992; the Senate ratified it without a dissenting vote. Obama and Biden later pointed to it as the legal basis for signing or rejoining the Paris Agreement without a Senate vote.

Some environmental advocates have expressed concern that future presidents may face a far harder path back into the convention. Sue Biniaz, a former State Department lawyer and deputy chief negotiator who now teaches at Yale, said that concern is not fatal.

“I wouldn’t want to say any sort of damaging action or inaction is irreversible,” Biniaz said. “I imagine a future U.S. government would work with other countries to revive as much as possible. We did that in 2021 after the first Trump administration.”