Statement from The Climate Reality Project President and CEO, Phyllis Cuttino, on the US Retreat from the UNFCCC

The Trump Administration’s retreat from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) upends decades of global collaboration to solve the climate crisis. This misguided decision ignores both the undeniable economic benefits of the inevitable clean energy transition and the dangers and expense of unabated climate change for American families and communities. This is the very opposite of leadership. We need leaders who will stand up to Big Oil and instead fight for a sustainable future that ensures people and the planet can thrive.

What’s more, the administration is also withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the very body that assesses climate science so that policymakers can make informed decisions. Rather than following the science, the Trump Administration continues to willfully ignore the realities, turning its back on the future and opportunities, while the rest of the world presses on without us. Ceding global leadership is a shortsighted move that will only leave Americans increasingly exposed to dangerous climate disasters, raise costs from energy to insurance for consumers and communities, and diminish our ability to build the future we desire for our children and generations to come.