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The United States abandoned the Paris agreement and became the first country to withdraw from an international pact on climate change, as the fate of its presidential elections is at stake.
It may turn out to be a temporary problem before Democrat Joe Biden’s administration rejoins the deal.
Otherwise, the global effort to curb global warming will have to continue without the government of the world’s second largest carbon emitter.
Either way, it all hinges on the outcome of a razor’s edge vote in which both candidates have predicted victory.
Biden proposed a $ 1.7 trillion plan to bring the United States to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, while President Donald Trump has aggressively defended the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change and undermined others. environmental protections.
If Trump wins, states, cities and businesses will take the lead.
However, a report last month by the America’s Pledge group found that even without Washington’s help, action by these groups would still make it possible for the US to cut emissions by 37% by 2030.
“The easy part, relatively speaking, is sending a notification to the UN that the United States intends to rejoin the Paris Agreement,” Andrew Light, climate adviser to former President Barack Obama, told AFP.
The United States will remain “out of the conversation” when Britain and the UN host a climate summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of Paris, but ready to participate again.
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to have a chance of keeping end-of-century warming below 1.5 C (2.7 F), global emissions must reach net zero by mid-century.
The target warming level was chosen to avoid triggering a series of catastrophic climate tipping points that could force humanity to inhabit only the northern and southern latitudes of the planet.
Niklas Hohne, a climate scientist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a member of a simulation group called Climate Action Tracker, wrote on Twitter that “Biden’s climate plan alone could reduce the temperature rise on the order of 0.1 ° C.
“This election could be a turning point for international climate policy. Every tenth of a degree counts,” he said.
Environmentalists say Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw from the Paris agreement three years ago made it easier for countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil to weaken their own ambitions.
Many of the impacts of climate change are already being felt today: loss of sea ice, and the Arctic is expected to be ice-free by mid-century; accelerated rise in sea level, longer and more intense droughts and heat waves, stronger hurricanes and changes in precipitation patterns.
Small island nations face being completely submerged.
Even if the United States rejoins, it will face a credibility gap; after all, he was also an architect of the Kyoto agreement that he never ratified.
That makes it crucial to ensure that a shift to climate action is permanent and not something a future Republican administration will simply undo, Light said.
“We know from polls that acting on the climate is not this red-on-blue, Republican-versus-Democrat issue in the real world,” he said, and a recent Pew poll found that more than 80% of Americans agree that humans contribute to the climate. change, including a plurality of Republicans.
The key to this plan will be for Biden to deliver on his promise of massive economic stimulus and job creation.
There are already signs that market forces are starting to tip the energy balance from fossil fuels to renewables, but the transition has a long way to go.
Despite Trump’s efforts to revive the coal industry, under his presidency more capacity was withdrawn than during Obama’s second term, while renewable energy reached record levels in production and consumption in 2019.
Natural gas, driven by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, continues to drive the energy mix, accounting for 35% of production.
Biden sees fuel as a “bridge” to renewable energy and has said he will not ban fracking.
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