Trump Pulls Out Of Climate Treaty, Continuing His Quest To Turn U.S. Into A Pariah Nation

Donald Trump is pulling out of a basic but hugely
important global climate treaty as he continues
his march to make the U.S. an economic and
political pariah basket case. 

 Donald Trump continued on with his desire to turn himself and the U.S. into a worldwide embarrassment Wednesday by announcing the United States is pulling out of a longstanding critical climate agreement. 

The agreement Trump is pulling the plug on is the overarching global treaty on climate change. It's called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC.  We will now become the only nation on the planet not part of this agreement. 

The agreement, ratified by Congress in 1992, doesn't force the U.S. to cut fossil fuels or reduce pollution. But it forms the basis and sets up the process for climate agreements like the Kyoto Protocol in 1995 and the Paris Agreement in 2015. Both the 1995 and 2015 accords are considered two monumental moments of global cooperation in the fight against climate change, as CNN notes. 

Trump has already started the process of pulling the United States out of Paris Agreement. The process finishes up this month, which leaves the U.S., Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries not committed to the Paris accord.  

 The U.S was the first industrialized nation to join the UNFCCC treaty and it will be the only nation ever to leave it. So it's another sign of how far we've fallen under Trump, as if we need more evidence.

The UNFCCC was one of 66 organizations the U.S. is abandoning, as the administration announced Wednesday. 

"Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength," said a statement from the White House.

Which is rich, since we've been stomping all over other nations' sovereignty lately. 

Trump and his minions are part of a small and ever-shrinking group of holdouts who still think climate change isn't happening, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. The years 2023 or 2024 were the world's hottest on record. As of this writing, the number crunchers were still trying to figure out if 2025 was the world's second or third hottest year on record. 

Pretty much everybody outside the MAGA sphere thinks pulling out of the UNFCCC is an incredibly dumb idea. 

Politico is among the many news organizations giving us some examples:

"Of all the wreckage Donald Trump is leaving in his wake, this one could be among the most consequential and damaging, particularly for future generations," said John Podesta, the climate policy coordinator for Presidents Obama and Biden.

World Resources Institute U.S. Director David Widawsky said withdrawal from UNFCCC is "a strategic blunder that gives away American advantages for nothing in return."

Other critics point out that the United States will now miss out on billions or even trillions of dollars in clean energy investments as the world moves away from fossil fuel consumption. Whether Trump likes it or not.

Like pretty much everything Trump does, we don't even know if withdrawing from UNFCCC is legal. The Senate ratified it, so we don't know from a legal standpoint if Trump can unilaterally pull the plug by himself. 

But since we have a MAGA-majority Congress and a MAGA-majority Supreme Court, both of which have given up their authority to Trump, it doesn't really matter.  We used to be a nation of laws. Now, apparently,  the law is just what Trump says it is. 

If sanity ever returns, getting back into the UNFCCC would also be complicated. So would rejoining other pacts, like the Paris Agreement.  (The Paris agreement is the one that pledges to keep global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-Industrial levels. It's getting more and more doubtful that goal can be accomplished, so now the goal seems to be shifting to 2 degrees).

As Politico tells us:

"Some legal experts say the Senate's consent does not operate in perpetuity after the U.S. leaves a treaty. Others argue that if a president can unilaterally leave a treaty, a future could rejoin it without a new vote.

Whatever happens, Trump is once again diminishing the nation's strength, influence and leadership, even as he somehow thinks he's increasing it. 

Trump is sort of the mascot of the Dunning-Kruger effect, part of which suggests that stupid people think they know a lot more about subjects than they do.  To Trump, as his narcissistic personality disorder rages out of control, thinks he alone is smarter than all of the climate experts out there. 

Plus he wants to keep his fossil fuel oligarch buddies happy, so there's that.