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The exit makes the US the only country among the 197 signatories to withdraw from the agreement, drawn up in 2015.
The United States has formally exited the Paris Agreement, fulfilling an old promise by President Donald Trump to withdraw the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases from the global pact to combat climate change.
But the outcome of the close US electoral contest will determine how long. Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has vowed to rejoin the deal if elected.
“The withdrawal of the United States will leave a vacuum in our regime and in global efforts to achieve the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” said Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). .
The United States remains a party to the UNFCCC. Espinosa said the body will be “ready to assist the United States in any effort to rejoin the Paris Agreement.”
Trump first announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the pact in June 2017, arguing that it would undermine the country’s economy.
The Trump administration formally notified the withdrawal to the United Nations on November 4, 2019, which took a year to go into effect.
The exit makes the US the only country out of 197 signatories to withdraw from the agreement, drawn up in 2015.
‘Lost opportunity’
Current and former climate diplomats said the task of slowing global warming to safe levels would be more difficult without the financial and diplomatic power of the United States.
“This will be a missed opportunity for a collective global fight against climate change,” said Tanguy Gahouma-Bekale, chairman of the African Group of Negotiators at the global climate talks.
An exit from the United States would also create a “significant deficit” in global climate finance, Gahouma-Bekale said, noting an Obama-era promise to contribute $ 3 billion to a fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the climate change. climate change, of which only $ 1 billion was delivered. .
“The challenge of closing the global ambition gap becomes much, much more difficult in the short term,” said Thom Woodroofe, a former diplomat at the UN Climate Talks, now senior adviser to the Institute for Policy of the Society of Asia.
Yet other major emitters have doubled down on climate action even with no guarantees that the United States will follow suit. China, Japan and South Korea have pledged in recent weeks to become carbon neutral, a commitment already made by the European Union.
Those promises will help fuel the massive low-carbon investments needed to slow climate change. If the United States were to rejoin the Paris agreement, it would give those efforts “a huge blow to the arm,” Woodroofe said.
European and American investors with collective assets of $ 30 trillion on Wednesday urged the country to quickly rejoin the Paris Agreement and warned that the country risks falling behind in the global race to build a low-carbon economy.
Scientists say the world must slash emissions this decade to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming.
Rhodium Group said that in 2020, the United States will be roughly 21 percent below 2005 levels. It added that under a second Trump administration, it expects US emissions to increase by more than 30 percent through 2035. from 2019 levels.
The Obama White House had pledged to reduce US emissions to 26-28 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels under the Paris agreement.
Overall, Biden is expected to raise those goals if elected. He promised to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 under a comprehensive $ 2 trillion plan to transform the economy.
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