In 2015, representatives of 195 countries came together in Paris to reach a historic international agreement to combat the climate crisis. The only two countries on the planet to reject the accord were Syria and Nicaragua.
In 2017, Syria and Nicaragua came around and embraced the Paris climate accord — right around the time that Donald Trump withdrew from the pact, leaving the United States standing alone for reasons that were easily exposed as nonsense.
The Paris agreement was built on an important legal foundation known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), first established in 1992 and embraced by a then-Republican administration. As The New York Times reported, Trump has now withdrawn from this, too:
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.
Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration and White House climate adviser to the Biden administration, told the Times, “This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision. … 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.”
Making matters worse, the Republican’s rejection of the UNFCCC was part of a broader effort that unfolded Wednesday: The Times also noted that Trump withdrew the U.S. “from dozens of international organizations intended to foster multinational cooperation, cutting ties with a wide range of prominent forums addressing international security, law, trade, economics and human rights.” The full list of the 66 international partnerships, as published by The Associated Press, is not short. It includes everything from the Global Counterterrorism Forum to the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law to the United Nations Democracy Fund. For many years, U.S. officials from both parties embraced the principle that we’re not just the preeminent global superpower; we’re also the “leader of the free world.” Trump clearly rejects this, as shown by the eagerness with which he’s abandoning the country’s international leadership role.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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All of this, of course, echoes Trump’s first term, when he rejected the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Open Skies treaty, the international nuclear agreement with Iran and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
