Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Paris Agreement, yet again, in one of the first executive orders he signed soon after taking oath as the 47th President of the United States of America.
“I am immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” he said during earlier remarks, to loud cheers from the audience.
“The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”
The country is now the only one alongside Iran, Libya and Yemen to be out of the Agreement.
The move is not a surprise for anyone that followed Trump’s campaign. If anything, it’s a classic case of history repeats itself, however much it may dismay people.
The administration will remain in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), but the order indicates they intend to severely limit participation, including on funding, and may not send delegations to the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings. Once the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is official, they may be allowed to sit in Convention meetings (and have a vote if one was taken), but to only participate as an observer to the Paris Agreement meetings, and not vote in those sessions.
Trump, during his first presidency, issued similar orders in 2017, but the exit period than was prolonged by 3.5 years. This US withdrawal will take effect in one year.
But, in what can only be called a stroke of luck, the Paris Agreement does not allow parties to submit their notice of withdrawal until three years after its entry into force (US entered on November 4, 2016).
Once a party does submit such notice, there is a one year period before the withdrawal becomes effective. Thus, the withdrawal did not become effective until November 4, 2020 (shortly after the next presidential election). At this point, President Joe Biden promptly revoked the withdrawal, re-entering the agreement.
A more extreme climate
A second US withdrawal from the world’s primary climate pact will have a bigger impact — in the US and globally — than the first retreat. Since then, climate change has become more extreme.
Last year was the planet’s hottest on record, and the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C of warming — the limit the Paris Agreement commits countries to trying to stay below.
The assessment proves yet again “global heating is a cold, hard fact”, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres after the 2024 analyses were published. “Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trailblazing climate action in 2025,” he said.
What this means
A few of the impacts of the US withdrawal, as listed by Reuters, will be to increase the chance of global warming escalating, to slow US climate funding internationally, and leave investors struggling to navigate the divergence between European and US green rules.
Trump has ordered an immediate cessation of all US funding pledged under UN climate talks.
That will cost poorer nations at least $11 billion — the US government’s record-high financial contribution delivered in 2024 to help them cope with climate crisis.
Together, all rich countries’ governments combined contributed $116 billion in climate funding for developing nations in 2022, the latest available OECD data show.
That does not include the huge climate-friendly government funding Biden rolled out domestically, whose future under Trump is uncertain.
Total US climate spending — counting domestic and international, from private and public sources — jumped to $175 billion annually over 2021-2022, boosted massively by the 2022 Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, according to non-profit research group the Climate Policy Initiative.
The US is also responsible for funding around 21% of the core budget for the UN climate secretariat — the body that runs the world’s climate change negotiations, which faces a funding shortfall.
Each country’s pledge toward the Paris goal is voluntary. The US commitment was to limit emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.
Before Biden left office, he announced a new US goal: to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% from peak levels by 2035, a goal that would likely require a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. That target is now moot.
Nevertheless, Trump is expected to scrap the US national emissions-cutting plan and potentially also Biden-era tax credits for CO2-cutting projects.
Regardless of politics, favourable economics drove a clean energy boom during Trump’s first term — with Republican stronghold Texas leading record-high US solar and wind energy expansion in 2020, US government data show.
But Trump has already taken steps to try to prevent a repeat of that, suspending offshore wind leases and revoking Biden’s electric vehicle targets.
The US produces around 13% of global CO2 emissions but is responsible for most of the CO2 released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
All of this will “further jeopardise the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals”, Michael Gerrard, a legal professor at Columbia Law School, said.
“That has obviously an impact on others. I mean, why should others continue to pick up the pieces if one of the key players once again leaves the room?” said Paul Watkinson, a former French climate negotiator who worked on the 2015 Paris Agreement.
‘Drill baby, drill’
The new president also vowed the US would embark on a new age of oil and gas exploration. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” he told the audience at his inauguration.
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
Trump also declared a national energy emergency, including an instruction to agencies to roll back restrictions on offshore drilling and reconsider protections for Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Trump also issued a moratorium on new wind power projects on federal lands, pausing new leases and permits for both onshore and offshore wind farms. He revoked an executive order that compelled government regulators to assess the risks of climate change to the financial system. And he instructed agencies to review any regulations that might “burden the development of domestic energy resources”.
That could include major Biden administration climate policies, including rules limiting emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants and new fees on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
Response to the order
Some US states have said they will continue climate action.
In a letter to UNFCCC’s Simon Stiell, New York governor Kathy Hochul and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, co-chairs of the US Climate Alliance, submitted that they will continue the country’s work on the Agreement.
“We write as co-chairs of the United States Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of two dozen governors representing nearly 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the U.S. population, to make it clear to you, and the rest of the world, that we will continue America’s work to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and slash climate pollution… Our states and territories continue to have broad authority under the U.S. Constitution to protect our progress and advance the climate solutions we need. This does not change with a shift in federal administration,” the letter said.
“The US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is a blow to global cooperation on climate change. It’s the largest economy in the world, and its actions and commitments to tackling climate change cannot not be but critical,” Manjeev Puri, distinguished fellow, TERI, said.
Despite the withdrawal, Guterres is confident that US cities, states and businesses “will continue to demonstrate vision and leadership by working for the low-carbon, resilient economic growth that will create quality jobs”, said associate UN spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino, in a written statement.
Whatever the experts’ hopes, Trump’s move is laced with irony as it comes at a time when US is battling wildfires that refuse to die, and have claimed 27 lives, gutted an area of 40,000 acres, and destroyed 12,000 structures.
