The United States has officially withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement for the second time, marking President Donald Trump's renewed rejection of the global effort to tackle climate change. The move makes the US the only country to have left the pact, placing it alongside Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only nations not party to the accord.
Experts say the US exit, announced on Trump's first day back in office, could significantly complicate global climate efforts. The administration has also announced it will leave the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which the Paris treaty was adopted, amounting to a wholesale withdrawal from climate governance.
Despite the US retreat, investment in low-carbon energy is outpacing spending on fossil fuels. Renewable sources accounted for more than 90 per cent of new power generation capacity last year and are now the cheapest source of new electricity in much of the world. China is increasingly shaping the green transition, with its firms producing over 80 per cent of the world's solar panels and about 70 per cent of wind turbines.
The US disengagement risks pushing it to the margins of global climate efforts and slowing momentum elsewhere, experts warn. Some countries, such as Israel, are reportedly considering following the US out of the Paris agreement. However, other nations have taken bolder action, with Colombia, the Netherlands and Pacific Island nations announcing plans to host talks focused on phasing out fossil fuels.
Basav Sen, climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the US abdication gives fossil fuel advocates in China more voice to slow the energy transition. He also warned that any rise in US emissions driven by Trump's fossil fuel expansion, including to meet demand from artificial intelligence datacentres, will make Paris targets harder to reach worldwide.
