U.S. withdraws from U.N. climate bodies as Greenland becomes strategic focus

President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the Times described as the legal foundation for global climate cooperation. The administration also announced it would pull out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the top U.N.

climate science body, a step the paper said goes beyond the earlier withdrawal from the 2015 Paris agreement. Greenland is warming much faster than the global average and its expansive ice sheet has been shrinking for decades, changes the Times said have made the island a more appealing acquisition target for the Trump administration.

Controlling Greenland was regarded as a punchline during the president’s first term, the paper reported, but is now viewed within the White House as a real strategic objective; Stephen Miller asserted on Monday that the U.S. had the right to "take" the territory, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that President Trump planned to buy it from Denmark.

Greenlanders are not on board, and Denmark’s prime minister warned that military intervention would end the NATO alliance. Climate-driven shifts in the Arctic — warming waters and easier navigation — have increased shipping traffic and attention to new routes such as Russia’s Northern Sea Route.

Key Topics

Politics, Donald Trump, Greenland, Unfccc, Ipcc, Denmark