Political Climate Boomerang and World Chaos

President Trump is withdrawing the United States from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the legal bedrock for pathbreaking efforts of the world to take a look at its footprint on planet Earth.

Is the US withdrawal from the environmental conventions of the UN undermining world safety and security?

First, the UNCCC, negotiated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, started the conversation on what the human species is doing to its only nest in the universe. These activities include the petroleum-powered industrialization of agriculture, transportation, fighting wars and the primary heating of billions of homes by the burning of global warming natural gas. This massive use of petroleum, coal and natural gas did not bode well for the future of humanity and the myriad of species in the Amazon forest and other threatened forests the world over. So, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change warned, though did not even try to regulate human activities, that humans were harming the planet and threatening civilization. Second, the 2015 Paris Agreement is a modest, though failing, global effort to control planetary temperature from getting too dangerous.

The executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Simon Stiell, said the withdrawal of the US will harm all, but especially the US. He said: “While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest [US] step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse.  It is a colossal… goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous.”

The Trump administration, however, is under the delusion that its rejection of climatological science, persisting in the falsehood that climate change is a hoax, would miraculously revive prosperity in America, which, according to the US Fifth National Climate Assessment of November 14, 2023, is warming up 68 percent faster than any other country on the planet. The Assessment also warns that: carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere since the 1970s have been higher than at any time for the last 800,000 tears; sea level rise in the 20^th century rose faster than at any time in the past 3,000 years; and drought in the Western US has been worse and persistent than at any time in the last 1,200 years.

Heat waves on land and seas, catastrophic fires, draught, hurricanes, rain bombs and storms embracing America are the results of a variety of human activities, especially the feeding and torturing of billions of food animals in thousands unregulated animal farms all over the country. These facilities become machines and factories of disease and toxic waste, stench and slaughter. They most likely gave the country and the world COVID-19, the 2020-2022 plague that killed millions of people and shut down the planet. I documented this potential origin of the pandemic in my latest book, Earth on Fire: Brewing Plagues and Climate Chaos in Our Backyards (World Scientific, 2026).

Animal factories are inhumane and dangerous. They emit large amounts of global warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The owners of these animal farms don’t treat the diseased and toxic wastes of the animals. They put the wastes in lagoons and spray them over farms. The very likely diseased meat of the slaughtered animals is not healthy for human consumption. Yet during the pandemic, the government ordered the slaughterhouses to remain open and continue their dangerous work.

Other activities and machines add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, like millions of airplanes flying; boats, yachts, ships, leaf-blowers, unfathomable petroleum-powered machines; the military, navy and air force training and fighting wars; cars and trucks, too many to count – most of them burning petroleum and polluting.

But the America First ideology of the Trump administration means “asserting control of the Western Hemisphere for the benefit of the United States.” This also connects the imperialism of the America First to the decision to withdraw from most UN organizations and programs, including “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.” Such an unpredictable and harmful step is not simply a return to the good old days – of selling Americans cheaper gasoline.

“The decision [of withdrawal from the UNFCCC] is not only an indicator of America’s rejection from global diplomacy, it’s a finger in the eye to the billions of people, including Americans, suffering through intensifying wildfires, storms and droughts, threats to the food supply and to biodiversity, and other dangerous and costly effects of a warming planet.”

“This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy quoted by the New York Times. McCarthy is the former US EPA administrator and White House climate adviser during the Biden administration. She accused the Trump administration of discarding “decades of global collaboration.” She said:

“This administration is forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country.”

I agree with Gina McCarthy. Like her, I served at EPA, but certainly not in a political position. I worked as an analyst for 25 years, all the way from the Carter administration to the end of the first George W. Bush administration, 1979-2004. I witnessed lots of corruption, the industry, including the fossil fuel companies, pulling the political strings behind the regulations and policies of the ceaselessly less protective EPA. I also recognized aggression behind the industry efforts for deregulation.

In an October 10, 1989 article I wrote for the Chicago Tribune, I shed light on the pivotal role of petroleum companies behind climate change and the warming of the planet. When the Wall Street Journal reprinted a couple paragraphs from the article, the political reaction was swift. Senior EPA officials demanded that I be fired. They wrote me a “letter of reprimand,” step number one before firing. I took the letter to the EPA administrator Willian Reilly, who dismissed the baseless charges against me. And what an incredible coincidence and embarrassment for the EPA: sending me the threatening letter on Earth Day 1990. What was in the minds of those EPA bureaucrats? Certainly, not the Earth.

Some 36 years later, Trump is repeating and exceeding the aggressive deregulation of the irresponsible Reagan administration. Withdrawing from the vulnerable global efforts to control the man-made climate giant in the room is party a self-destructive impulse under the influence and corruption of the money of the fossil fuel industry and partly an imperial notion that might is right, even when history and science say no, might rarely if ever is equivalent to justice. Thinking America First most likely was behind the US pulled out of the UN convention of 1992.

“The decision to withdraw [from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] is part of an aggressive assault on climate efforts by President Trump. His administration has rolled back climate regulations, removed scientific data on climate change from government websites, thwarted the development of wind and solar energy and commissioned a federal report downplaying the effects of a warming planet.”

Yes, abandoning the United Nations is aggression – and much more. Trump treats domestic and foreign matters as if they did not differ. It’s not too difficult to see through the bluster of Trump, that: “the most chilling hallmark of Trump’s second presidency: the seamless fusion of domestic and foreign policy, bypassing America’s constitutional system of government to assume virtually boundless, unchecked power.”

Power corrupts

Indeed, power is at heart of this aggression and war against science, humanity, civilization and the planet.

After WWI, the victors headed by President Woodrow Wilson, crafted the League of Nations, 1919-1920. The purpose of this first global intergovernmental organization was to promote international cooperation, disarmament and peace. Yet the US never joined the League. Moreover, decisions demanded unanimity. The League also did not have the military to enforce its decisions. In the 1930s, Japan, Italy and Germany ignored international agreements and the League was impotent. The result was WWII.

After WWII, in 1946, the victors created the United Nations to replace the League. The UN has had more success than the League. However, just like the League, the presence and support by the US is a critical factor in its thriving or decline and extinction and the almost certain wars that follows its demise. So, Trump’s grabbing of Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, and treating him like a criminal in the US, while, simultaneously, getting out of long-standing agreements with the United Nations may be symbolic blows to international order. The world is in potential anarchy and chaos, not much different than the anarchy and aggression of unchecked Germany that sparked WWII.

Epilogue

Fossil fuels, especially petroleum, is behind the existential climate emergency, the blindness of the ruling classes to put humanity, civilization and planet Earth first. The other charge is a US administration thoroughly captured by fossil fuels, risking health, security, democracy and the planet for short term profits.

American politicians, professors-intellectuals and environmentalists, no matter their party affiliation, should act together to repair the damage to the United Nations and the fragile international order of the rule of law. The Senate should exercise its authority and rejoin the US to the UN conventions and programs. Maduro may be a bad leader, but his trial should take place in Venezuela, not in the US.

Doing nothing is unacceptable. It may trigger more wars, more deregulation, more pollution, more global ecocide, higher planetary temperature — and anarchy and chaos in societies and the already stressed Mother Earth, our sole home in the Cosmos.

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