Below is a statement from Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, on Thursday 8 January 2026 in response to the U.S. decision to withdraw from the UNFCCC.
"The United States was instrumental in creating the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, because they are both entirely in its national interests.
While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest 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 own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous.
It will mean less affordable energy, food, transport and insurance for American households and businesses, as renewables keep getting cheaper than fossil fuels, as climate-driven disasters hit American crops, businesses and infrastructure harder each year, and as oil, coal and gas volatility drives more conflicts, regional instability and forced migration.
It will also mean less American manufacturing jobs, while every other major economy ramps up its clean energy investments, powering economic growth and energy security, and pushing renewables past coal as the world's top energy source last year.
This is a key reason 194 countries said in one voice at COP30 that the global transition is now irreversible, that the Paris Agreement is working, and resolved to make it go further and faster together. Because it's clear this is the only way to protect every nation from record-breaking global heating and its brutal impacts on every economy and population.
UN Climate Change will keep working tirelessly to help all peoples around the world share in the vast benefits of climate cooperation under the Convention and the Paris Agreement, as the global transition keeps gathering pace and scale.
The doors remain open for the US to reenter in the future, as it has in the past with the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile the size of the commercial opportunity in clean energy, climate resilience, and advanced electrotech remains too big for American investors and businesses to ignore."
