President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not merely a bureaucratic exit from global institutions. It is a political statement with material consequences that shifts burdens from the world's largest historical polluters onto countries least responsible for the crisis.

The UNFCCC was built on a simple but essential principle. Those who contributed most to climate change should do more to address it. As the single largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases, the US played a central role in shaping this framework. The Trump administration's UNFCCC withdrawal is being described as an abdication and a refusal to engage in the very system designed to manage climate consequences, which America has done much to cause.

By exiting the UNFCCC, the US relinquishes its formal role in not only shaping emissions rules but also transparency standards........

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