President Donald Trump addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2025. ANGELINA KATSANIS / AP
President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from a foundational climate treaty and the world's leading global warming assessment body, as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced Wednesday.
A total of 66 international organizations were named in a White House memorandum as "contrary to the interests of the United States." Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements.
Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, deriding climate science as a "hoax" at the UN's high-level summit last September.
The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved later that year by the US Senate during George H.W. Bush's presidency.
