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WASHINGTON: The United States abandoned the Paris accord on Wednesday (November 4), becoming the first country to withdraw from an international pact on climate change, but Joe Biden promised that he would return immediately as president.
With the election results pointing to a likely defeat for Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election, Biden adopted the tone of a president-elect and made it clear that climate was a top priority.
“Today, the Trump Administration officially abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will meet with it,” tweeted Biden, who would take the presidential oath on January 20 if elected.
Biden has proposed a $ 1.7 trillion plan to bring the US, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, to net zero by 2050.
Trump has aggressively defended the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change and weakened other environmental protections.
However, a report last month from the America’s Pledge group found that even without Washington’s help, action by cities, states, and businesses would allow the United States to cut emissions by 37% by 2030.
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Trump gave a one-year notice to abandon the Paris agreement on November 4, 2019. Biden would have to officially notify the UN of the United States’ willingness to return.
Such notification would be “the easy part,” Andrew Light, former President Barack Obama’s climate adviser, 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 about to participate again.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden punches the nose of a person in a polar bear costume during a campaign event in New Hampshire. (Photo: AFP / JUSTIN SULLIVAN)
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to have a chance of keeping end-of-century warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, 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 degrees Celsius “.
“This election could be a turning point for international climate policy. Every tenth of a degree counts,” he said.
CREDIBILITY GAP
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 devastating 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 sea level rise, longer and more intense droughts and heat waves, hurricanes and stronger changes. in precipitation patterns.
Small island nations face being completely submerged.
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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.
US President Donald Trump has aggressively defended the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change, and weakened other environmental protections. (Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski)
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 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 percent of Americans agree that Humans contribute to 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, more capacity was withdrawn under his presidency 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 and accounts for 35% of production.
Biden sees fuel as a “bridge” to renewable energy and has said he will not ban fracking.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Wednesday highlighted recent commitments by South Korea and Japan as signs of progress.
“There is a growing coalition of nations committed to achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century,” Stephane said.
“Our support, our belief in the need for (a) strong and active Paris Agreement remains unchanged,” he added.
