Donald Trump has once again taken the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, abandoning the global effort to limit climate change. Trump signed an executive order today to exit.
The Paris accord was adopted in 2015, committing nearly 200 countries including the US to working together to stop global average temperatures from rising much higher than they have already. 2024 was the hottest year on record, beating the previous record set in 2023.
Scrapping efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US can have repercussions for Americans and people around the world. The US was already the biggest historical emitter of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions and the the world’s leading oil and gas producer, giving it big sway in global climate negotiations. Within America’s borders, billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have already grown more prevalent (adjusted for inflation) in recent years.
Exiting the Paris agreement “is in clear defiance of scientific realities and shows an administration cruelly indifferent to the harsh climate change impacts that people in the United States and around the world are experiencing,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement.
Our planet’s climate has stayed relatively stable for the last 11,000 years or so, supporting the rise of agriculture and civilization as we know it, until the industrial revolution. The Paris agreement aims to keep global temperatures within roughly the same temperature range, preventing warming of more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius.
It might not seem like a big difference in temperature, but climate change has already become severe enough to supercharge weather-related disasters across the US including wildfires still burning around Los Angeles that leveled entire communities this month.
Trump took the US out of the Paris accord the last time he was in office. Former President Joe Biden recommitted upon stepping into office in 2021. Now, the US will join Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only countries not on board with the international agreement. It’ll take one year from the date the Trump administration sends notification to the United Nations before US withdrawal from the Paris agreement will be official.