President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. on Monday to withdraw once again from the 2015 Paris climate agreement — instantly isolating the country from the global campaign to stem catastrophic warming.
This time, Trump’s repudiation of the worldwide climate effort could bite deeper by taking effect more quickly and at a time when the new president has more far-right allies overseas and at home.
Language in Trump’s executive order said the U.S. would consider the withdrawal to take effect “immediately.” It didn’t mention the one-year notice period that the climate pact spells out.
Under the terms of the Paris deal, any withdrawal from the agreement is supposed to take effect one year from the day a country formally notifies the United Nations it’s getting out. It was unclear late Monday if the Trump administration is attempting to abrogate that notice period.
The order, which Trump signed with public fanfare just hours after taking office, collides with a rise in climate havoc around the world, including the devastating Los Angeles wildfires and revelations that last year was the hottest ever recorded. It marks the launch of an aggressive agenda to roll back U.S. climate policy, driven by an emboldened president who invites confrontation over the scientific underpinnings of climate change.
The long-promised exit will jettison the United States’ Biden-era promise to cut climate pollution by up to 66% within a decade. It also calls into question a host of other U.S. commitments, such as providing billions of dollars in support to poorer nations suffering from unprecedented heat waves, floods and rising seas.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said in his inauguration address. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it.”
Trump’s exit this time cements the Republican Party’s opposition toward international climate action and its rejection of decades of dire warnings from scientific academies worldwide. Musk, now a prime Trump cheerleader and adviser, had a prominent seat at the new president’s swearing-in Monday. And Trump’s success in winning the popular vote in November makes it harder to argue that he doesn’t have the support of American voters, however slim — even as much of the nation saw deadly wildfires tear through Los Angeles.
The coming year will see other countries finish their national climate plans for cutting pollution by 2035, the focus of this November’s COP30 global climate talks in Brazil. Many of those countries’ 10-year climate strategies — which will guide how sharply they can curb warming — will depend on funding from wealthy nations, a process the U.S. is now determined to sit out.
U.S. carbon emissions fell just 0.2% last year, even with Biden’s green spending in full swing, and Trump has vowed to expand fossil fuel production. Trump has also railed against wind power, attacked programs to expand electric cars and promised to unravel rules aimed at limiting power plant pollution.