On Jan. 7, 2026, President Donald Trump declared that he would officially pull the United States out of the world’s most important global treaty for combating climate change. He said it was because the treaty ran “contrary to the interests of the United States.”

His order didn’t say which U.S. interests he had in mind.

Americans had just seen a year of widespread flooding from extreme weather across the U.S. Deadly wildfires had burned thousands of homes in the nation’s second-largest metro area, and 2025 had been the second- or third-hottest year globally on record. Insurers are no longer willing to insure homes in many areas of the country because of the rising risks, and they are raising prices in many others.

For decades, evidence has shown that increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, largely from burning fossil fuels, are raising global temperatures and influencing sea level rise, storms and wildfires.

The climate treaty – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – was created to bring the world together to find ways to lower those risks.

Trump’s order to now pull the U.S. out of that treaty adds to a growing list of moves by the admnistration to dismantle U.S. efforts to combat climate change, despite the risks. Many of those moves, and there have been dozens, have........

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