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Since the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the United States has shown a sometimes conservative and sometimes radical pendulum in its position on several key subsidiary climate treaties. For example, in 1997, the United States Congress refused to approve the Kyoto Protocol signed by former US vice president Al Gore. In 2015, President Obama used executive power to bypass Congress to sign the Paris Agreement. In 2017, President Trump announced the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement. These seemingly confusing behaviors actually reflect the contradictions and conflicts in the formulation of climate policy of the United States. Using neoclassical realism theory as the analytical framework, the authors of this paper explore how such several key variables as leader image and perception, partisan politics, and civil society and lobbying groups shape the climate policy of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]