US President Donald Trump has pulled his nation from the Paris climate agreement for a second time.
The decision was one of a raft of executive orders signed by Trump on Monday after being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
Trump signed the orders in front of supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” he said.
“The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”
The US is the world’s biggest historic emitter of greenhouse gases. The move means the United States, Iran, Libya and Yemen are now the only countries in the world outside the 2015 pact.
The Paris Agreement is an international treaty signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015 to limit global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The pact also seeks to enhance the ability of countries to adapt to climate change and to provide financial support to developing nations for mitigation and adaptation efforts.
In 2017, during Trump’s first tenure, he pulled the country out of the agreement, stating that the pact would “undermine” the US economy and put the country “at a permanent disadvantage”.
However, due to a clause in the agreement requiring a one-year wait period for withdrawal to take full effect, it only came into force in 2020 and was halted in 2021 after former President Joe Biden took office and reversed the decision.
Trump also vowed to expand the fossil fuel industry with a promise to “drill, baby, drill”, hence reversing the clean energy efforts of the previous administration.
The Biden administration had on December 2024 committed to cutting down emissions by 61 to 66 percent by 2035.
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