Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,
President Donald Trump put another dent in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and 65 other international organizations dedicated to climate and social justice.
Trump’s order caps a recent trend in which many corporations have also canceled their decades-long commitments to left-wing global alliances, undermining what had been a highly influential worldwide movement that once included the world’s largest nations and companies.
According to a White House statement, Trump’s Jan. 7 executive order directs “all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”
On Jan. 8, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would no longer provide funding to the Global Climate Fund, which financed many of the U.N.’s climate initiatives. The United States originally joined more than 190 other nations in the UNFCCC in 1992, when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty.
This was followed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which countries committed to CO2 limits and reduction targets, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which accelerated national governments’ commitments and spending to reduce global temperatures. The U.S. Senate did not ratify either of these subsequent accords.
Corporate Alliances Proliferate
Thereafter, a number of net-zero corporate alliances emerged to align the private sector with climate initiatives. At its peak, this network included financial and corporate alliances, such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and others.
These alliances operated under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a U.N.-backed multi-trillion-dollar coalition. The Glasgow Alliance focused on financial institutions because they were not only financiers but also dominant shareholders of publicly traded corporations, and thus a critical means of leverage over the private sector.
Net Zero Asset Managers members, for example, included BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the world’s largest asset managers. These three firms alone are collectively the largest shareholders in more than 40 percent of publicly traded U.S. firms, and 88 percent of the S&P 500, according to a study by George Mason University business professors Sebahattin Demirkan and Ted Polat.
Over the past several years, however, members have begun to exit these organizations amid a conservative backlash and allegations of conflicts of interest and collusion. Much of this backlash occurred in conservative U.S. states, where Republican lawmakers, treasurers, and attorneys general launched boycotts and antitrust investigations of banks and fund managers accused of colluding against oil, gas, and coal companies and of violating their fiduciary duties to investors.
Vanguard quit Net Zero Asset Managers in 2022, and BlackRock quit in January 2025, after which the initiaitve announced it was suspending activities. In 2023, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance’s members quit en masse, facing risks of antitrust prosecution.
ESG Critics Cheer
Trump’s Jan. 7 order to withdraw the United States from the UNFCCC aligns the U.S. federal government with the U.S. private sector and comes as the Trump administration endeavors on many fronts to spur U.S. oil and gas production.
The move was applauded by many critics of the ESG industry, who claim that the net-zero movement has reduced living standards by driving up energy costs while failing to control the earth’s temperature.
“President Trump at one stroke has removed the United States from a long list of harmful foreign entanglements, headlined by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Myron Ebell, chairman of the American Lands Council and former Trump Environmental Protection Agency transition team advisor, said in an email to The Epoch Times.
“Getting out of the UNFCCC is great news for Americans and can also be great news for people all over the world suffering from energy poverty policies if it hastens the collapse of the international climate racket.”
Sterling H. Burnett, director of climate and environmental policy at The Heartland Institute, called Trump’s order “the biggest single step taken by any administration in my lifetime to advance U.S. sovereignty, national interests, and Americans’ liberty.”
“So many of the treaties and organizations benefit politically connected elites and unaccountable bureaucrats, and enriching corrupt political leaders, while delivering little or no benefit to average people, often keeping the poor in subservience and poverty,” Burnett said in an email to The Epoch Times.
“The UNFCCC was misguided from the start, established on the false premise that human fossil fuel development and use was causing catastrophic climate change, rather than being the boon for humanity that it has been.”
Climate Activists Respond
Advocates for net-zero policies were less complimentary.
“By choosing to run away from addressing some of the biggest environmental, economic, health, and security threats on the planet, the United States of America stands to lose a lot,” Yamide Dagnet, senior international vice president at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
“With diminishing credibility and competitiveness in the industries of the future, the United States will be missing out on job creation and innovation, ceding scientific and technological leadership to other countries.”
Members of the House of Representatives Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition issued a statement that Trump’s order “sent a dangerous signal to the global community that America is withdrawing from its role as a world leader, leaving America weaker, poorer, and more unsafe than ever before.”
Trump’s order removes the world’s largest economy and oil and gas producer from the UNFCCC, and cuts off one of its major funding sources.
Prior to Trump’s reelection in 2024, the United States had been paying 22 percent of the UNFCCC’s 75 million euros ($87.2 million) budget, which was increased to 81.6 million euros ($94.9 million) for 2026, but Trump halted these payments upon taking office in 2025.
In response, China increased its share from 15 to 20 percent, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, stepped in to pay the amounts Trump cut off.
Loading recommendations…
