Trump Orders US To Leave Paris Climate Agreement And The WHO – Again

Despite the potentially devastating consequences of these actions, neither will come as a surprise to anybody given that Trump had already tried to take the nation out of both arrangements in his first term before these exits were reversed by the Biden administration. However, with the world having now surpassed the dreaded temperature limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the decision to abandon climate goals has come at a particularly delicate and critical moment.

Signed by the vast majority of the world’s nations a decade ago, the Paris Agreement represents the planet’s most coordinated effort to limit global warming. However, immediately after taking office in 2017, Trump began the process of pulling the US out of the deal.

It took until the very end of Trump’s first presidency for the country to finally exit the accord, and then the country’s membership was promptly re-instated by Biden. This time around, however, it will likely take just one year for the US to leave the global pact, which means the impact of the move is likely to be more significant.

In addition to shunning the global treaty, Trump has also vowed to end the Biden administration’s “green new deal”, which promoted the development of clean energy and set ambitious carbon reduction targets. Reversing these policies, the new president says he plans to “drill baby drill”, removing all limits on American fossil fuel production.

According to Carbon Brief, the overall impact of Trump’s climate and energy plans could see the country increase its annual emissions by four billion tonnes by 2030 – that’s the equivalent of the combined emissions of Japan and the EU. By leaving the pact, the US will now join Iran, Yemen, and Libya as the only countries not taking part in the global effort to limit climate change.

As for the WHO, Trump has accused the agency of showing bias towards China in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and began the process of withdrawing in 2020. Once again, this decision was immediately overturned by Biden, only for the flip-flopping to continue now that Trump is back.

The new executive order says that the US is once again leaving the WHO “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” Trump has also railed against what he calls “unfairly onerous payments” made by the US to the WHO.

As the largest funder of the UN-affiliated agency, the US currently contributes a little under a fifth of the WHO’s $6.8 billion annual budget.

In response, the WHO has said in a statement that it “plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans, by addressing the root causes of disease, building stronger health systems, and detecting, preventing and responding to health emergencies, including disease outbreaks.”

By pulling the US out of the organization, Trump risks weakening the healthcare resources available to not just the American people, but the world as a whole.