Careless People
Decision to Withdraw from UNFCCC Reflects Lack of Understanding, Humanity
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” — The Great Gatsby
Yesterday the Trump Administration announced its intention to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the foundational international climate agreement adopted in 1992 that the United States joined in 1994. Each of the other one-hundred ninety-seven countries in the world remains a part of the convention.
Since its adoption, the UNFCCC has served as a focal point for climate diplomacy. Major agreements like the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015) have come from the framework, along with countless smaller agreements organized cooperatively among members, like the Global Methane Pledge.
These efforts have reduced estimated business as usual global warming from more than seven degrees above pre-industrial levels to just over three degrees above pre-industrial levels. Important progress even if much additional work remains to get the estimate closer to the one point five degrees of global warming that will allow us to avoid the worst climate impacts.
Just this year at COP30, delegates and observers shared a renewed commitment to a more inclusive form of multilateralism, which would not only facilitate discussions among national delegations, but also bring in constituencies of people with particular perspectives, like women, farmers, youth, and indigenous people.
Some feared that the absence of the United States at this year’s climate talks would slow the negotiations. The US’s experienced negotiating team is credited with facilitating some tricky inter-party conversations. As a global leader in greenhouse gas emissions, walking away from the framework, turning our backs on the delegates begging the world to pay attention to their ruined crops, flooded villages, and starving children is disgraceful.
(The enormous human cost of dismantling USAID demonstrates that the current administration is not moved to respond with compassion and responsibility in the face of humanitarian crises)
Some observers have pointed out that the US has a been an inconsistent contributor to climate action over the years as the makeup of Congress becomes more or less interested in the subject. It’s true that our particular legislative and political processes have made it difficult to make lasting commitments on climate mitigation, especially. The US is not alone in that struggle. But the steadiness of our negotiating team, the global influence that comes from being a superpower, and decades of careful diplomatic work meant that the US had an important seat at that table.
Ceding our leadership role in the UNFCCC hurts us more than it hurts them.
Withdrawing from the UNFCCC is short-sighted and foolish. The world economic system is in a moment of transition, as clean forms of energy become more affordable and reliable and the costs of climate change mount. Rather than leverage this generational opportunity to improve energy reliability while lowering costs, to promote environmental justice while boosting US manufacturing, the administration continues to choose a backward-looking path focused on fossil fuels.
Even from the most self-interested perspective, this was the wrong call.
“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,” said Gina McCarthy, Executive Director of America is All In.
Climate change impacts have grown more serious and disruptive in the recent decade. While residents of the United States have previously been sheltered from the most serious impacts of climate change, climate impacts like extreme heat, increases in hazardous weather, and a greater risk of wildfire have become noticeable and disruptive even in the United States. This trend is expected to continue, with implications for issues from national security to home economics.
The Administration has been vocal in claiming the economic benefits of fossil fuel production. However it has been shown again and again that those benefits flow to oil executives and already wealthy shareholders. It continues to be true that the bulk of the US population is more likely to experience hardship as a result of oil and gas production, rather than economic gain, whether it’s from increased property insurance premiums, health impacts from poor air quality, rising energy prices, or compromised safety and security as a result of increasingly severe hazardous weather.
Withdrawing from the UNFCCC does not change anything about the scientific reality of climate change, the observed and projected impacts, or the changing world economy. It simply means we will continue hurtling into a climate-changed future with our hands over our eyes and our hands tied behind our back.