The US should completely quit the United Nations forum to tackle climate change in order to quickly exit the Paris climate agreement, according to a conservative lawyer who is part of Donald Trump’s transition team.



Abandoning the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would allow the US to back out of the international climate effort within a year, far sooner than the four-year period that would be required to ditch the Paris accord, which came into force in November. Such a move would probably prove a severe blow to global efforts to avoid dangerous warming.

Steven Groves, a lawyer at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said exiting the UNFCCC would be the “most practical” way for the US to drop its climate change commitments. Groves is part of the state department transition team for the president-elect, who has promised to “cancel” the Paris deal.

“There’s a practical reason for canceling the UNFCCC in that it would provide the shortest timeframe,” Groves, who said he was speaking on the Heritage Foundation’s position on the issue as he was not authorised to speak on behalf of the Trump transition team, told the Guardian.

“If we only withdrew from the Paris agreement, that’s still three or four years. We’ve declined to join other international agreements and there were dire threats of the end of US influence in the world and that hasn’t come to pass. It’s not as if Nato would disband if we did that.”

Although Trump recently said he has an “open mind” about the Paris agreement, he has consistently threatened to exit the deal. Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, told Fox News Sunday that Trump’s position on the climate accord remains that “most of it is a bunch of bunk”.

Trump, who has himself called global warming a hoax, has appointed a number of people who reject the overwhelming scientific position on climate change to his transition team.

Myron Ebell, who has said climate science is “phony”, is heading the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, while Groves, albeit in a less influential position, has used Twitter to assail “climate change alarmists” and Hillary Clinton for “shilling for the orthodox climate change ‘consensus’”.

Meanwhile, Bob Walker, a Trump campaign adviser who is not part of the transition process, has advocated eliminating climate research at Nasa and claimed that scientists are deeply divided on the cause of warming.

In fact, the vast majority of peer-reviewed science, along with all of the world’s major scientific bodies including Nasa and the Royal Society, agree that the world is warming and that human activity is the primary cause. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, with 2016 set to be the warmest yet. Separate lines of evidence, such as rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers and the shifting range of species, all point to a rapidly changing climate.

President George HW Bush, with ratification from the Senate, committed the US to the UNFCCC in 1992 following the Earth summit in Rio. Following two decades of often fraught negotiations, 196 nations agreed in Paris last year to cut emissions in a bid to avoid a temperature rise of 2C globally.

Trump’s election has raised concerns that the US, the world’s second largest emitter, could exit the process and discourage other nations during a period when emissions must be radically reduced to avoid disastrous heatwaves, sea level rise and the mass displacement of people.

The new president could choose to simply ignore the Paris agreement but Groves said the US should quit the entire framework to undo what he said was Barack Obama’s improper signing of the deal. Obama did not ask the Republican-controlled Senate to ratify the Paris agreement, which has a binding goal but leaves emissions reduction targets and methods to individual nations.

“The current administration wouldn’t submit it to the Senate, where it would’ve gone up in flames,” Groves said. “It’s being a little too clever with the constitution and the treaty-making power. There is a balance between Congress and the executive on this issue and the Paris agreement has thrown that balance off for raw political reasons.

“Just because you’re the president, you don’t become a dictator. President Obama was betting that another president, such as Hillary Clinton, wouldn’t withdraw the agreement. He made a political calculation and we’ll soon find out if that was right or not.”

Barack Obama and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, shake hands during a joint ratification of the Paris climate deal in September. Photograph: How Hwee Young/AP

Other legal experts have maintained that Obama was well within his powers to put the US’s name to the Paris deal, given that it is largely unenforceable. John Kerry, the secretary of state, successfully pushed for key parts of the text to use the word “should” rather than “shall” in order to negate the need for Senate approval.

David Wirth, of the Boston College law school and formerly of the state department, said that previous Senate approval of the UNFCC, along with the language of the Paris deal, meant there was no executive overreach.

“There’s no question that it’s constitutional,” Wirth said. “The state department was extremely precise in making sure of that. If anything, they were extra cautious. These are aspirational provisions and the president has the authority to review an existing situation, that’s self-evident. The legal authority is already there.

“Withdrawing from the UNFCC would leave the US without a seat at the table, having withdrawn from a set of requirements that are procedural rather than onerous. That would be political grandstanding and contrary to the national interest. There would be opprobrium and criticism from the rest of the world, for no apparent benefit.”

Scientists have warned that renewed efforts are required to avoid breaching the 2C threshold, with the current Paris commitments still leaving the world on course for a temperature increase of 3C or more.

Adam Sobel, a climate scientist at Columbia University, said Groves had presented “a misleading and inaccurate portrayal of both the science and economics of climate mitigation, greatly understating both the risks of human-induced climate change and the benefits of the Paris agreement while overstating the costs.

“It is transparently a piece of advocacy on behalf of the short-term interests of fossil fuel companies, against the broader interests of both the US and the rest of the world.

“The majority of the American people support US participation in the Paris agreement. If the US withdraws from the UN convention and the Paris agreement, history will judge us harshly.”

The US’s status in international climate talks will be heavily influenced by Trump’s choice for secretary of state. Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney, ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former CIA chief David Petraeus have all been linked to the role.

There has also been speculation that Rex Tillerson, chief executive of oil giant Exxon, is being considered by Trump for the position, a prospect that has horrified environmental groups due to the company’s history of concealing the full impact of climate change.

“If the goal is to drain the swamp in DC, Tillerson might not be your man; Exxon’s business plan continues to require raising the level of the ocean to the point where Foggy Bottom will be well underwater,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of climate group 350.org.

“But this is certainly a good way to make clear exactly who’ll be running the government in a Trump administration - just cut out the middleman and hand it directly to the fossil fuel industry.”