Milei says he’s considering taking Argentina out of Paris Agreement

Just days after announcing its departure from the World Health Organization, President Javier Milei could be about to make another high-profile multilateral withdrawal.

Milei, 54, revealed in an interview published Wednesday that he is analysing whether to withdraw Argentina from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Denouncing the historic climate deal – adopted in 2015 by 195 parties to curb greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change – as a “fraud” of “cultural Marxism,” Milei told French newspaper Le Point that he is considering withdrawal.

Earlier this week, Milei announced that Argentina would be leaving the WHO, following in the footsteps of US President Donald Trump. The Republican leader has already resigned the United States from the Paris climate accords.

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

Back in 2016, during then-president Mauricio Macri’s government, Argentina ratified the agreement and adhered to it ever since.

If Milei follows through with the withdrawal, Argentina will join the United States, Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only UN member states that are not part of the climate pact.

Milei’s statements to the French newspaper echo those of Trump, who withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement during his first term, though without leaving the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, restored Washington as a signatory to the deal, but on the first day of his second term last month, Trump ordered a fresh withdrawal.

"I do not agree with the environmentalist agenda, which I consider a complete fraud. The way we talk about climate change today is entirely wrong," Milei told Le Point.

Arguing that global warming "has nothing to do with human presence," Milei argued that climate change is linked to the planet’s natural temperature cycles.

"This agenda is inspired by cultural Marxism, which sees human beings as the oppressors and the environment as the oppressed,” he said.

“Nowadays, if you don’t talk about climate change, they label you a flat-earther or a conspiracy theorist, and as a result, they censor and silence you. This is the censorship of wokeism that is gagging us, which I denounced” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he concluded.

Critics warn the Paris withdrawal undermines global cooperation on reducing fossil fuel use and could embolden major polluters like China and India to weaken their commitments.

There is an overwhelming scientific consensus linking fossil fuel combustion to rising global temperatures and increasingly severe climate disasters.