Trump Withdraws U.S. From 66 International Bodies Including The One Climate Treaty Every Nation On Earth Had Joined, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That America Was Still A Member Of The World
WASHINGTON. President Trump announced Wednesday that the United States is withdrawing from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty ratified by the Senate, together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and 64 additional international entities and United Nations bodies, resolving a long-standing concern that the country remained formally acquainted with the rest of the planet.
The Framework Convention, adopted in 1992 and upheld without interruption by every Republican and Democratic administration since, counts every nation on Earth among its members, a distinction the United States has now elected to surrender. No country had ever withdrawn from the agreement in its more than three decades of existence, a record administration officials described as precisely the sort of thing that exists to be broken. The departure arrives alongside a separate letter already filed to leave the Paris climate agreement for a second time, an exit officials clarified was now merely the smaller of the two.
By also exiting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific body that assesses global warming for governments worldwide, the administration ensured that the United States will no longer help shape the reports it has spent years declining to read. Officials noted that individual American scientists remain free to study the climate, provided they do so without the federal government's participation, assistance, or acknowledgment.
"The President looked at the number 66 and felt strongly it should be zero," said one source within the administration, who characterized membership in the global community as a subscription the country had been paying into for far too long. The same source confirmed that several of the 64 remaining organizations were still being identified by name, and that the full list would be released once staff finished establishing which ones the United States had belonged to.
Climate scientists noted that the planet, now in its twelfth consecutive year among the twelve hottest on record, will continue warming regardless of which bodies the United States attends, a detail the administration did not dispute so much as decline to consider relevant. Withdrawal from the convention does not lower a single emission, alter a single forecast, or cool a single degree, a fact officials cited as evidence that there had never been much point in belonging in the first place.
At press time, the United States had successfully become the only nation on Earth outside the treaty that every nation on Earth had joined, an achievement the President was said to regard as proof of leadership.