America’s climate retreat should galvanize global action: The cause is vital, not US participation

The US has now pulled out from all major initiatives to keep the planet we inhabit from warming too much. Sure, the US had given notice of its exit from the Paris agreement of 2015—due to come into effect later this month—soon after its President Donald Trump took office last January. So the fact that the country has turned its back on the UNFCCC, under whose aegis global talks are held, should not have come as a surprise.

Trump’s disdain for multilateralism, avowed disbelief in climate change and relentless pursuit of his ‘America First’ policy have all translated into complete disregard for a larger world view. Soon after he returned to the White House, he issued an executive order directing a review of US participation in international bodies deemed contrary to national interests.

But what the Trump administration has overlooked is that, as with covid, when it comes to the environment, boundaries cease to exist. We sink or swim together.

The consequences of climate change cannot be held off by a wall or security apparatus, as evident in the flash floods that took over 100 lives in Texas last July. An analysis of climate disasters in the US released by Climate Central just a day after Washington’s decision to quit the UNFCCC says that 2025 brought the third highest annual number of costly calamities, causing at least 276 deaths and $115 billion in damages.

Climate-related entities have long been criticized by American businesses that do not see why they must bear burdens of mitigation without equivalent commitments from what the US calls “major emitters" like China and India. This, despite the fact that our per capita exhaust of planet- warming gases is a fraction of America’s.

More importantly, it is the Western world, the US included, that spewed the bulk of these gases into the atmosphere during the course of its industrial emergence. To now expect emerging countries to give up the dream of a better life for their citizens by exercising equal restraint goes against the grain of equity.

Nobody can escape the heat-trap that the globe has become. Scientific data shows that the last three years were the hottest on record, with readings of temperature going back to 1850. In the face of such irrefutable evidence, we cannot afford to slacken our efforts at either prevention or mitigation.

The latter calls for vast sums of money that developing nations cannot afford and rich countries are unwilling to cough up. That is bad enough. But if the world’s collective will to fight on without US backing flags, it would be tragic.

Regardless of worsened odds against climate success, given the threat we face after the world warms more than 1.5° Celsius above its pre-industrial average—a tipping point we might already have reached—we must find a via media.

‘Common but differentiated responsibilities,’ on which the World Trade Organization works, is apt for this crisis. Even the US has shown respect for it in the past. Rather than resign to a bleak future, the rest of the world should unite to strive for the greater good. With or without the US.