As part of a broad exodus from “anti-American, wasteful, and useless” international organizations and agreements, President Donald Trump just dealt a devastating blow to the United Nations “climate” regime, as UN officials refer to it. Multiple analysts are now heralding the death of what Trump has repeatedly referred to as the global-warming “hoax.” But the UN and its allies are hitting back hard.
In a January 7 presidential memorandum addressed to heads of executive departments, Trump announced that the U.S. government would be exiting 66 international organizations. About half of those, including the UN climate bodies and agreements, are part of the UN. The decision followed a year-long review ordered by the president early in his second term.
The entire UN climate process, including the Paris Agreement, is built on the foundation known as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 1992 treaty, signed by President George H.W. Bush and ratified by the U.S. Senate, created a bureaucracy by the same name. And it set in motion the annual climate summits that built the multitrillion-dollar machine dubbed by the UN the “international climate regime.” That system is now in mortal danger.
In addition to withdrawing from the UNFCCC, Trump also announced that the U.S. government would exit the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The outfit, which brings together scientists from around the world, has long been criticized for its highly politicized and often inaccurate claims and predictions about alleged man-made global warming. Its assessment reports provide the “scientific” justification for the UN’s climate agenda.
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities,” the White House said in a release. “Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength.”
End of UN “Climate Terror”?
Critics of the climate process, the UN, and the alarmism celebrated the U.S. announcement as a major victory.
James Taylor, president of the free market-oriented, powerhouse think tank Heartland Institute, which has hosted 15 climate summits of its own, also praised the move. “President Trump displayed tremendous judgment and courage pulling America out of impoverishing and counterproductive globalist entities such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,” he said.
Taylor, whose influential organization has played a major role in debunking the UN narrative for policymakers, slammed the UN agencies, too. “These entities exist to impose leftist, top-down decision making regarding important topics while bypassing common sense and national interests,” he said of the UNFCCC and the IPCC. “America and the world itself will benefit from Trump’s decisive action.”
Secretary of State on “Why”
Commenting on Trump’s Executive Order 14199, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasted multiple UN entities for a broad range of reasons. But he took aim at the UNFCCC in particular, highlighting, among other concerns, that the bureaucracy created under the UNFCCC was “squandering millions of dollars on funding for climate-alarmist, anti-energy investment in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] and Gaza.”
The UNFCCC has displayed “a consistent record of dysfunction if not outright malice,” added the former U.S. senator from Florida. “The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,” said Rubio, who in addition to serving as the nation’s top diplomat is also leading the National Security Council.
The organizations being targeted by the Trump administration are in the crosshairs for being “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful,” he continued. Also on the chopping block, the secretary said, are those international outfits that are “redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”
“It is no longer acceptable to invest the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars in institutions that cannot demonstrate results, accountability or respect for our national interests,” added Rubio. “It is an abdication of America’s global leadership to continue funding and promoting organizations that obstruct solutions to the problems facing the world today such as affordable energy, economic growth, and national sovereignty.”
Rubio was clear that these withdrawals do not mean America is “turning its back on the world.” Rather, he said, the U.S. government is simply “rejecting an outdated model of multilateralism — one that treats the American taxpayer as the world’s underwriter for a sprawling architecture of global governance.”
UNFCCC Hits Back
Naturally, the UNFCCC pushed back after the announcement. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell threatened that the move would hurt “the U.S. economy, jobs, and living standards.” That pain will apparently be hitting the United States, he continued, as all sorts of apocalyptic developments—”wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts” — supposedly get “rapidly worse” due to emissions of carbon dioxide.
“While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the U.S. economy,” Stiell said in a statement. “It is a colossal own goal which will leave the U.S. less secure and less prosperous.”
“The doors remain open for the U.S. to reenter in the future, as it has in the past with the Paris Agreement,” he continued. “Meanwhile, the size of the commercial opportunity in clean energy, climate resilience, and advanced electrotech remains too big for American investors and businesses to ignore.”
Is the U.S. Exit Permanent?
While Stiell and much of the globalist media would like people to believe that the next president can simply rejoin the UNFCCC, legal experts say it is not so simple. Major legal and constitutional questions about the move remain. But Establishment mouthpiece Politico, known for its far-left and globalist views, previously reported that exiting the UNFCCC would be a huge blow to the UN’s climate agenda.
“If Trump does pull the country out of the framework, it could be difficult for a new president to undo,” the outlet reported this summer amid reports that the Trump administration was considering it. “Joining a treaty requires a two-thirds Senate vote — a high hurdle even in less polarized times.”
Some leading climate alarmists have also argued that Trump can withdraw unilaterally. Former U.S. Principal Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Sue Biniaz, a key legal architect of the Paris Agreement, told alarmist organization Carbon Brief that Trump appeared to be on solid ground on being able to exit without congressional support.
“In terms of domestic law, while the Supreme Court has not spoken to this issue (it treated the issue as non-justifiable in the Goldwater v Carter case), it has been U.S. practice, and the mainstream legal view, that the president may constitutionally withdraw unilaterally from a treaty without going back to the Senate,” she said.
Even NBC “News,” which brazenly parroted UN climate propaganda as if it were indisputably factual, reported that re-engaging with the UNFCCC would need Senate approval. “Re-entering the UNFCCC treaty would require a new two-thirds vote from the Senate, so Trump’s withdrawal could make it difficult for a future president to rejoin the Paris Agreement,” the far-left outlet reported.
Marc Morano, who has attended over 20 UN climate summits and previously worked in a senior role for the Senate Environment Committee, echoed that view. “By his action today, President Trump has now injected permanence into keeping the failing UN climate agenda from rising from the ashes again,” he explained. “America is now a significant step closer to avoiding wild climate ying-yang policy swings, ie, Obama to Trump to Biden & back to Trump.”
“Trump 2.0’s climate legacy could now become permanent, making it very difficult for a future President, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], or Gavin Newsom to get the U.S. back into the UN climate fiasco,” continued Morano, who called on Trump to exit the UNFCCC in an interview with The New American just weeks ago from COP30 in Brazil.
Critics vs. UN & Globalists
Famed meteorologist Anthony Watts, who operates the award-winning climate website Wattsupwiththat.com and has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed papers on climate, welcomed Trump’s decision. He said it represents a “decisive break” from the international climate-policy machinery “that has too often substituted politics and ‘consensus management’ for transparent, accountable science.”
“For years, the UNFCCC/IPCC ecosystem has operated like a self-perpetuating global climate bureaucracy,” added Watts. “It elevates a narrow, pre-approved narrative, then turns around and uses it to rationalize higher energy costs, heavier regulation, and permanent ‘emergency’ governance — while treating skeptical inquiry as something to be sidelined rather than answered.”
The UN, however, was not amused, claiming the U.S. government has a “legal obligation” to keep handing over American tax money. “As we have consistently underscored, assessed contributions to the United Nations regular budget and peacekeeping budget, as approved by the General Assembly, are a legal obligation under the UN Charter for all member states, including the United States,” top UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement on behalf of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, a longtime socialist, after Trump’s order was announced.
But despite the American exit from dozens of UN agencies and agreements, the globalist march will continue, insisted Dujarric. “The United Nations has a responsibility to deliver for those who depend on us,” he said.
European Union officials could barely contain their disgust. “The White House doesn’t care about environment, health or (suffering) of people,” claimed European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, who oversees EU policy on climate and the environment. “Peace, justice, cooperation or prosperity are not among its priorities. Not even the great legacy of US to global governance.”
Other Agencies and Policies in the Crosshairs
The latest White House announcement of withdrawal from 66 international agencies, commissions, and bodies follows previous high-profile exits from other institutions. These include the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Human Rights Council, and more.
In the new order, Trump directed all executive departments and agencies “to take immediate steps to effectuate the withdrawal of the United States from the organizations” listed in his memo. “For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law,” the order explains.
The new directive comes as Trump also works domestically on reining in and reversing the “climate” policies of previous administrations. Ridiculing the man-made global-warming hypothesis as a “hoax” and the “greatest con job” in human history, Trump said crushing the fraud must be a top MAGA priority.
Among other key policies, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is currently working on undoing the Obama EPA’s “endangerment finding.” That finding held that carbon dioxide — exhaled by humans and known to scientists as the gas of life — is “pollution” that must be regulated by the federal government. Human emissions of CO2 make up a fraction of one percent of all the “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere.
Trump did not send a representative to the recent 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) UN climate summit in Brazil, which was attended by this writer and a team for The New American. “The Trump Administration refused to use taxpayer dollars to send or facilitate any official travel for this conference, which is dedicated to hamstringing the American economy and bankrupting the American people,” a spokesman told TNA.
Legal Issues & Big Picture
Globalist climate alarmists such as Jean Su with the Center for Biological Diversity celebrated the decision not to attend. Speaking at the summit, she hoped to approve an “ambitious” deal by consensus with the U.S. missing and then impose it on Americans after Trump leaves office. Now, her group is working on legal action while claiming Trump does not have the power to leave the UNFCCC without support from Congress.
“The Constitution has articulated what it takes to get into a treaty, which is two-thirds of the Senate majority, but it is actually silent on what it takes to leave a treaty,” Su was quoted as saying. “There has not been affirmative case law either way as to whether a president can unilaterally pull out of a treaty that was approved by two-thirds of the Senate. So we are looking at legal action.”
Law professors and legal experts quoted by activist organizations and “climate” outfits expressed varying views on that issue, and what it would take for a future U.S. president to rejoin. While many believe it would require another ratification vote in the Senate, some argued that the 1992 approval could still be considered valid. There will undoubtedly be litigation in the years ahead.
What is clear is that, with the stroke of his pen, Trump has dealt a devastating blow to the UN climate agenda. Far from being about “science,” the discredited warming narrative is one of the most important pretexts being used to build a global political, economic, and even religious system. And that agenda is in trouble.
All who value liberty, national sovereignty, affordable energy, and economic prosperity should be celebrating Trump’s latest move against the UN and globalism. It is a great start. But to truly free America from the globalist UN and its machinations, much work remains.
A bill to withdraw from the UN entirely, the DEFUND Act, would deal a potentially mortal blow to the dictators club and its agenda. That has already been filed in both houses of Congress.
