Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
In an executive order issued on 7 January, the White House ordered the country’s withdrawal from 66 international agreements determined to be “contrary to the interests of the United States,” including two global efforts to combat climate change: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The UNFCCC is a 1992 treaty that sets the legal framework for international cooperation to limit climate change. The IPCC is the United Nations organization that assesses and communicates climate science to global governments.
The order will make the United States the only country in the world that does not participate in the UNFCCC.
“As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration.”
“This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” Gina McCarthy, former EPA administrator under President Barack Obama, told E&E News. “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration.”
McCarthy added that the U.S. withdrawal would limit the country’s ability to influence important decisions that impact the global economy, especially as other countries invest heavily in clean energy.
KD Chavez, executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance, an advocacy organization, said in a statement that the withdrawal “protects polluters while abandoning all of us, our livelihoods, and Mother Earth.”
“This move undermines treaty obligations, tribal sovereignty, and the global cooperation needed to survive the climate crisis,” Chavez said.
Others say the UFCCC is ineffective, and that leaving it could open new opportunities to cooperate with other countries to combat or mitigate climate change: “The framework convention is a joke,” George David Banks, Trump’s international climate adviser during his first term, told E&E News.
The UNFCCC has been criticized in the past for the ineffectiveness of its annual “conferences of the parties,” or COPs, as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists at these meetings.
Related
• Read the Executive Order: Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States
• Trump Quits Pivotal 1992 Climate Treaty, in Massive Hit to Global Warming Effort
• What is the UNFCCC and Why Is the U.S. Pulling Out?
• Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
Because the Senate originally, and unanimously, advised President George H.W. Bush to join the UNFCCC in 1992, legal experts question whether the order to withdraw is constitutional, or whether the United States could rejoin in the future.
The withdrawal from the IPCC also cuts the United States out of global climate science assessments. “Walking away doesn’t make the science disappear, it only leaves people across the United States, policymakers, and businesses flying in the dark at the very moment when credible climate information is most urgently needed,” Delta Merner, associate accountability campaign director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.
On his first day in office last year, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty setting long-term emissions goals, for a second time—an action that one United Nations report estimated would eliminate 0.1°C (0.18°F) of global progress on climate change by 2100. Withdrawing from the IPCC and UNFCCC leaves the United States further isolated from international cooperative efforts to limit climate change.
—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer
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