The Trump administration is exiting a landmark 1992 climate treaty, President Trump announced Wednesday.
Trump said in a presidential memorandum that the U.S. would pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with dozens of other international organizations.
The UNFCCC was established in a 1992 treaty and seeks global cooperation on climate change. Every country has ratified it, and leaving makes the U.S. the only country that is not part of it.
The organization seeks to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases to a level that would prevent dangerous interference in the climate system.
The Senate ratified the treaty in 1992. Then-President George H.W. Bush said at the time that it “represents a delicate balance of many interests.”
However, Trump said in his memo that being part of the UNFCCC was “contrary to the interests of the United States.”
The move is separate from the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement – a global pact to try to limit the planet’s warming to less than 1.5 or 2 degrees celsius (2.7 or 3.6 degrees fahrenheit).
Trump started the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement last year and that is expected to take effect later this month.
Trump and his administration have repeatedly sought to downplay and deny climate change, despite science showing that human activity is heating up the planet and worsening extreme weather.