Trump Pulls Out of Global Climate Treaty

The action could make it more difficult for a future administration to rejoin the Paris climate accord, the agreement among most nations to fight climate change.

President Trump announced on Wednesday that he was withdrawing the United States from the bedrock international agreement that forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change.

The treaty, which has been in place for 34 years, counts all of the other nations of the world as members.

In a social media post, the White House announced that Mr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum that pulled the United States from the climate pact and 65 other international organizations and treaties that “no longer serve American interests.” About half of those are United Nations organizations.

“As this list begins to demonstrate, what started as a pragmatic framework of international organizations for peace and cooperation has morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

The climate treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was established in 1992 and is referred to as the UNFCCC. It formed the legal foundation for the Paris agreement, a 2015 voluntary pact among nations to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels.

The administration said it was also pulling the United States from the top United Nations climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as a host of other major international environmental organizations. They include the International Renewable Energy Association, which represents global clean energy interests, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The moves cement the United States’ isolation from the rest of the world when it comes to fighting climate change.

The decision is not only an indicator of America’s rejection from global diplomacy, it’s a finger in the eye to the billions of people, including Americans, suffering through intensifying wildfires, storms and droughts, threats to the food supply and to biodiversity, and other dangerous and costly effects of a warming planet.

“It sends a major signal around the world of U.S. disdain for climate policy that’s essential for the world,” said Jean Galbraith, a professor specializing in international law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Mr. Trump has already taken steps to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement. That will become official on Jan. 20.

“This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy, the White House climate adviser during the Biden administration. She said the Trump administration was discarding decades of global collaboration.

“This administration is forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country,” she said.

President Trump’s retreat on climate cooperation comes as the United States’ main rival on the world stage, China, has come to dominate the clean energy technologies of the future. At the same time, many of the United States’ most powerful allies, including Australia, Britain and the European Union, are also advancing their ambitions to reduce emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases and ramp up renewable energies.

John Kerry, the U.S. global climate envoy during the Biden administration, said the withdrawal would be “a gift to China and a get out of jail free card to polluters who want to avoid responsibility.”

Robert E. Kopp is a climate scientist at Rutgers University who has served as a lead author on assessments published by the U.N. climate science body, from which the United States is withdrawing.

“It sends the message that the U.S. is not interested in having evidence-based policy,” Dr. Kopp said. He and other researchers called it a blow to America’s scientific credibility.

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The treaty withdrawal would take a year to go into effect once the U.S. files a formal notice with the United Nations. Once finalized, the U.S. would no longer take part in annual negotiations among 200 nations aimed at encouraging countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

By a unanimous vote, the U.S. Senate ratified the U.N. climate treaty in 1992. A president’s legal authority to unilaterally withdraw from a treaty is questionable, and the Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the issue.

And yet as a practical matter, past presidents have been able to do so. When President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, for example, only a few members of Congress objected.

Some legal scholars have said withdrawing from the U.N. climate framework would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to return under a future president without another Senate vote.

Others, including Ms. Galbraith said a future president could bring the U.S. back into the treaty relatively easily. The two-thirds Senate vote that took place in 1992 remains in effect, she said, and doesn’t get nullified if a president walks away from the agreement.

The decision to withdraw is part of an aggressive assault on climate efforts by President Trump. His administration has rolled back climate regulations, removed scientific data on climate change from government websites, thwarted the development of wind and solar energy and commissioned a federal report downplaying the effects of a warming planet.

In February he instructed the State Department to review U.S. support for all global agreements and organizations, including the U.N. climate framework.

No other country has followed the United States’ lead in pulling out of the Paris deal. It remains unclear whether the exit from the underlying convention would inspire other countries to follow suit.

The drive to remove the United States from the climate treaty originated with a small cadre of people who deny the established science of climate change and who have seen their influence grow in the second Trump administration.

“Break out the champagne,” said Myron Ebell, a conservative activist.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington.

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