As of Tuesday, the United States is no longer a party to the Paris agreement on climate change, becoming the only country in the world to abandon the international commitment to slow global warming.
The formal departure from the climate accord comes one year after President Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawal. Earlier this month Mr. Trump said the United States would also leave the United Nations treaty that underlies the Paris agreement, which was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1992 and signed by President George H.W. Bush.
The dual moves by Mr. Trump underline America’s isolation in the effort to control emissions of greenhouse gases, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, that are dangerously heating the planet.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump was withdrawing the U.S. from “radical” international agreements.
“Thanks to President Trump, the U.S. has officially escaped from the Paris Climate Agreement which undermined American values and priorities, wasted hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and stifled economic growth,” Ms. Taylor said. She called it an “America First victory.”
The United States is currently the planet’s second largest climate polluter after China. It is also the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, which is notable because emissions linger in the atmosphere for decades or even centuries, trapping heat and contributing to sea level rise, heat waves and intensifying extreme weather like floods, wildfires and droughts.
Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union climate commissioner, said abandoning the Paris agreement is a “clear absence of leadership” that will have “significant negative impacts” on America’s reputation.
“What others will say is, ‘How on Earth is it possible that a country with this might, with this deep a purse, and with this direct responsibility for the planet heating up, basically checks out’?” Mr. Hoekstra said.
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Mr. Trump also withdrew from the Paris accord during his first term. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. later rejoined the accord.
By also pulling the United States from the underlying United Nations treaty this time, Mr. Trump is attempting to make it more difficult for a successor to do as Mr. Biden did and restore the country’s standing at some point in the future.
Mr. Trump has dismantled a wide range of climate policies in the United States and sought to throttle clean energy technology like wind and solar power as well as electric vehicles. His administration is promoting more drilling and mining of coal, oil and gas. Mr. Trump repeatedly disparages Europe’s clean energy transition and has lectured the Europeans, calling their investment in wind energy foolish. He has also used trade policy to try to pressure other nations to abandon their climate goals and instead buy American oil and gas.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization said it was “good” that the U.S. withdrew from the Paris agreement. The whole object of the agreement, she said, “was to move the world toward net zero, which is an objective that is fundamentally unsound.”
Net zero refers to a pledge by most countries to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2050, something that can only be achieved by drastically curbing the use of fossil fuels and increasing the use of renewable energy.
Jennifer Morgan, a senior fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and Germany’s former climate envoy, said she believes other countries will continue to transition to clean energy. But she said, “It will really require leadership from the European Union and other countries to be a heavyweight against the Trump administration’s efforts to roll things back.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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