‘A colossal own goal’: Trump’s exit from global climate treaties will have little effect outside US

For much of the last 30 years, the rest of the world has been forced to persevere with climate action in the face of US intransigence

• Outrage as Trump withdraws from key UN climate treaty along with dozens of international organisations

Donald Trump's latest attack on climate action takes place amid rapidly rising temperatures, rising sea levels, still-rising greenhouse gas emissions, burgeoning costs from extreme weather and the imminent danger that the world will trigger tipping points" in the climate system that will lead to catastrophic and irreversible changes.

The US president's decision to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the world's leading body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will not alter any of those scientific realities.