The Trump administration announced this month that the United States will quit more than a dozen climate-related international organizations, a decision the next Democratic president will no doubt reverse. This zig-zag approach is a natural consequence of the United Nations and other global coalitions embracing policies that alienate a significant portion of U.S. voters — who are often responsible for largest share of those organizations’ funding.
The administration’s most significant withdrawal is from the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has served as the bedrock for international climate initiatives since it was adopted in 1992. It also gave formal notice that it would exit 16 international organizations related to energy and climate change. These departures are mostly symbolic, as the administration stopped cooperating with most climate-related organizations last year and ended U.S. funding for many of them.
The utility of each of these institutions varies, but there are some consistent themes. They’re overly bureaucratic and frequently have overlapping missions. International organizations are also dominated by progressives and often call for more government intervention than the average American citizen is comfortable with.
For instance, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long advocated dietary changes that focus more on “plant-based” foods. Meanwhile, the U.N. Environment Programme has pressed countries to adopt “mandates to switch to zero emissions road vehicles by specific dates,” an idea that has already given European leaders serious headaches. Rhetoric from U.N. leaders often sounds like they are preaching to leftist activists: In 2022, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres bemoaned the “grotesque greed” of oil and gas companies as he urged governments to “tax these excessive profits.”
The problem here is not that climate change is a hoax. It’s that many government-directed solutions floated on the international stage are detached from economic or political reality. Well-meaning countries that implement them inevitably endure backlash from voters (see France’s “yellow vest” riots in 2018 in response to the country’s fuel taxes). Meanwhile, authoritarian states use climate negotiations to launder their reputations without any expectation that they would meaningfully contribute to solving the problem. Think Azerbaijan, host of the 2024 U.N. climate conference.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, defending the withdrawals, said “it is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it.” U.N. functionaries will throw a fit and simply wait for the next Democratic administration to reenter these international bodies. The better approach would be to offer tangible and immediate reforms, including streamlining the alphabet soup of organizations and consolidating those that are duplicative. The only way to stop the U.S. from leaving is to stop giving good reasons to depart.
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