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 As The New York Times reported, Trump has now withdrawn from this, too: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.”








