The U.S. withdraws from the Paris Agreement
US President Donald Trump has once again defended his decision to withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement, which he has described as "one of the biggest scams in history". "I've ended the ridiculous green scam. It would have been more profitable to throw that money out the window," Trump said ironically, stressing that the objectives of the agreement are based on projections that he described as unscientific and uninformed.
Newly appointed US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office for the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. This Agreement, adopted in 2015 during COP21, is an international treaty in which nearly 200 countries committed to limiting the increase in global temperature to 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels.
"President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement," states a document published on January 20, 2025 on Donald Trump's priorities as the 47th President of the United States. On his first day in office, the Republican signed an executive order for the country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. This is the second time he has done so. During his previous term (2017-2021), Trump had already withdrawn the United States from this pact against climate change.
"Don't we have 12 years left? It's been 12 years and here we are. Can you believe it?" the president joked. "The person who came up with this idea is a person who has never taken an environmental course. He was a bad student, he wasn't a good student, he didn't understand much, and he came up with this idea, and suddenly everyone started implementing it. The top Democratic leaders got sucked into it, and we spent trillions of dollars on it. It would have been more profitable to throw that money out the window," Trump said.
The president announced his withdrawal from the climate agreement during his inaugural address on Capitol Hill, in which he also promised to boost US oil production and eliminate subsidies created by Joe Biden for the purchase of electric vehicles.
"We will drive down prices, fill our strategic reserves to the brim and export American energy around the world. We will become a wealthy nation again," he said.
What is the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement is an international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) held in Paris. It came into force on 4 November 2016.
With this treaty, almost 200 countries committed to limiting "the increase in global average temperature" to 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels or, at least, to remain "well below" 2 ºC.
The signatory countries also committed to review their climate commitments every five years and to provide financing to developing countries to help them "mitigate climate change, strengthen their resilience and improve their capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change."
The executive order signed by Trump reads as follows: "The United States Ambassador to the United Nations will immediately provide formal written notification of the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."
According to the executive order, in recent years, the United States has sought to join international agreements and initiatives "that do not reflect the values of our country or our contribution to achieving economic and environmental goals." He also said that "these agreements divert American taxpayers' money to countries that neither need nor deserve financial assistance for the benefit of the American people."
Executive orders are directives signed by the president that allow him to create policies outside of the normal congressional process and can be revoked by the next president, challenged in court, or controlled by Congress.