Trump’s withdrawal from the UN climate body may make it easier for other nations to address it with a recalcitrant US out of the way. It will be America’s loss, adding to a bill of at least $7 trillion and counting.

From Bloomberg (gift link above):

“At the end of 2025, a year when the Trump administration relentlessly jackhammered an architecture of environmental protection and climate action that took decades to build, it was tempting to hope there wasn’t much left to wreck. Just a week into 2026, it was clear such hope was naive — though at this point the biggest victim of all this vandalism is the US itself.

“President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an [executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/) withdrawing the US from 66 different international bodies, including most notably the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, two groups that set the world’s agenda, and budget, for addressing planetary heating and its consequences. Scoff at them if you like, but this is a big and influential table at which the US will no longer sit.”