US withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement sets disturbing precedent, human rights advocates warn News
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US withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement sets disturbing precedent, human rights advocates warn

The formal US withdrawal from the landmark Paris Climate Accords sets a disturbing precedent that will “instigate a race to the bottom,” Amnesty International said Tuesday.

Marta Schaaf, Amnesty’s program director for climate and corporate accountability, stated that the move may dramatically hinder or reverse global efforts to mitigate the consequences of climate change:

The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement…along with its withdrawal from other major global climate pacts, aims to dismantle the global system of cooperation on climate action. The US is one of several powerful anti-climate actors but as an influential superpower, this decision, along with acts of coercion and bullying of other countries and powerful actors to double down on fossil fuels, causes particular harm and threatens to reverse more than a decade of global climate progress under the agreement.

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the agreement, in part as a symbolic gesture of his commitment to fossil fuels. At the time of Trump’s stated intention, the UN announced that it would take one year for the withdrawal to take effect.

Even though the US may no longer be a party to the Paris agreement, the International Court of Justice’s landmark 2025 Advisory Opinion confirmed that the nation still has “legal obligations to protect humanity from the worsening impacts of climate change.”

The Paris Agreement, established in 2016, aims to curb the rapid escalation and harmful impacts of global warming. It obligates nations to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and to keep it below 2°C.

In October 2025, three-quarters of Europeans said they believed large companies should be held accountable for human rights and environmental violations across their global supply chains, signaling a shift toward more cautious and protective attitudes toward environmental issues. Discussing the dissonance created by the US withdrawal, Schaaf said:

US-based climate advocates and activists now find themselves on the frontlines of a fight with implications for current and future generations everywhere. Global solidarity and support to ensure accelerating momentum to address climate change has never been more urgent. Those who witness the harms caused by climate change and who can speak safely – must speak up. Other governments…must push back against all coercive efforts by the US. Ceding ground now risks losing it for years. Neither the planet nor the people living on the frontlines of proliferating unnatural disasters have that much time.

The US is the only country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. It now joins Iran, Libya, and Yemen among nations not party to the agreement.

THIS DAY @ LAW

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On February 1, 1790, the Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time. The meeting was held at the Merchants' Exchange Building in New York City, then the national capital. Chief Justice John Jay presided over the first Court with five Associate Justices: James Wilson, John Blair, James Iredell, William Cushing, and John Rutledge. However, due to the limitations of 18th-century transportation technology, the meeting was postponed by Jay until the following day. The first meeting was held primarily to organize the Supreme Court. The Justices did not hear their first actual case, Chrisholm v. Georgia, until 1792.

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