The UNFCCC was adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and its Conference of Parties (COP) returns to Belem in Brazil later this month. In stark contrast to 1992, when no country was against recognising the challenge of climate change, we now have the administration of the largest cumulative emitter of carbon dioxide since industrialisation, the United States, denouncing climate change as a hoax.

The US, for long, has been a naysayer at the UNFCCC on obligations and commitments but now has, for a second time, pulled out of the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015, with President Trump calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”.

That the climate change negotiations are in reality about limiting use of fossil fuels, which still remain the bulwark of economic power, means that in his scheme, the US will not allow itself to be limited to lose the fossil fuel advantages it enjoys, no matter the consequences. Alternatively, he recognises the fossil fuel bonanza to only have a limited time and sees no reason to give it up before alternate technologies and fuels tip the economic balance.

His administration playing disrupter at Belem shouldn’t, therefore, be taken lightly by the world—and, yes, the best would be their staying away. Let us, however, remember that the US hasn’t pulled out of the UNFCCC itself, and even the Paris Agreement withdrawal is still to come into effect. But climate change is a bugbear for them, unlike some other aspects of multilateralism, especially the UN, which provides the President a pulpit........

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