{"id":172122,"date":"2020-11-09T12:01:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T12:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=172122"},"modified":"2020-11-08T04:58:20","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T04:58:20","slug":"the-us-just-left-the-paris-climate-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/the-us-just-left-the-paris-climate-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Just Left the Paris Climate Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the presidential election matters so much for global action on climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Christiana Figueres (L 2), Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon (C), Foreign Affairs Minister and President-designate of COP21 Laurent Fabius (R 2), and France’s President Francois Hollande (R) raise hands together after adoption of a historic global warming pact at the COP21 Climate Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, on December 12, 2015. Credit: ARNAUD BOUISSOU, COP21, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Nov 2020 – <\/em>The United States left<\/a> the Paris climate agreement<\/a> today, making the US the only country in the world<\/a> to back out of the accord. But the next occupant of the White House will be the far bigger determinant of the future of international action on climate change.<\/p>\n

Pulling out of the accord was one of President Donald Trump\u2019s signature campaign promises in 2016. He announced on June 1, 2017<\/a>, that the US would begin the exit process. But because of the way the agreement works, the US was not able to officially withdraw from the accord until this week, the day after Election Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Trump wins, the US will stay that course and watch the world coordinate action on climate change from the sidelines. The US will not be subject to the terms of the agreement, and it will play no role in shaping it from here on out \u2014 where emissions reduction targets should be, what counts as a valid way to reduce emissions, helping lower-income countries adapt to climate change, what environmental rules should govern trade, and so on.<\/p>\n

But former Vice President Joe Biden<\/a> has pledged to rejoin the accord \u201con day one\u201d if he becomes president.<\/p>\n

This potential climate policy whiplash for the US \u2014 which helped convene the Paris agreement in the first place, then started backing out, and may now jump back in \u2014 means that the US will have to make up for lost time and rebuild trust with other countries<\/a>. It\u2019s not even the first time<\/a> the US has pulled a 180-degree turn on a major international climate agreement.<\/p>\n

The US, as the wealthiest country in the world<\/a> and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases<\/a>, has an outsize responsibility in international climate negotiations. Where the US goes, many others follow. Despite the US backing out of the Paris accord, other parts of the world have recently stepped up their ambitions on climate change, from the European Union<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest economic bloc, to China<\/a>, currently the world\u2019s largest greenhouse gas emitter.<\/p>\n

Even with the Covid-19 pandemic, and in some cases because of it, countries like South Korea, France, and Italy<\/a> are taking more aggressive action to cut greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

However, some of the more ambitious targets under the Paris agreement \u2014 like keeping average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius \u2014 are nearly out of reach<\/a> unless drastic action from governments and consumers<\/a> is taken immediately. So despite the waffling from the US, it will still have a place at the table. But there are still some things the US needs to do before it can take a seat.<\/p>\n

The Paris climate agreement has been struggling<\/h3>\n

It took the world decades of stops and false starts to come up with the Paris climate agreement, and it remains the most potent international framework to get countries to reduce their contributions to global warming. However, it has critical weaknesses that have threatened to collapse it completely.<\/p>\n

In 2015, just about every country in the world convened in Paris and agreed to a few simple but hard-fought principles: The climate is changing due to human activity, the world should aim to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century compared to preindustrial levels, every country has an obligation to act, but every country gets to set their own goals.<\/p>\n

The terms of the climate agreement are voluntary and don\u2019t carry the force of law (hence \u201cParis agreement\u201d or \u201cParis accord,\u201d and not \u201cParis treaty,\u201d which would be legally binding). But the terms are structured in a way that creates a lot of incentives to encourage countries to do more to limit their emissions of heat-trapping gases, and it contains some prods for countries that are slower to act.<\/p>\n

It was clear from the outset that what countries initially planned to do to cut greenhouse gases wouldn\u2019t be enough to stay below 2\u00b0C, let alone hit an even more aggressive target under the agreement of limiting warming to less than 1.5\u00b0C. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a> found that the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half from current levels by 2030, reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and then start pulling carbon dioxide back out of the air thereafter in order to meet the 1.5\u00b0C benchmark.<\/p>\n

But the idea of the Paris agreement was to get everyone to agree to a common set of goals and strengthen their commitments over time, with periodic international meetings to see where everyone stands and to hammer out the tedious rules of how to gauge progress. So far, this hasn\u2019t been enough to keep the world on track to meet the goals of the accord.<\/p>\n

And the subsequent meetings of the parties to the Paris agreement over the past few years have proven to be disappointments<\/a> anyway, with few countries willing to step up their targets and ongoing disputes about critical details of the accord. This year\u2019s meeting, which was scheduled to be held in Glasgow in the United Kingdom<\/a>, has been postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Since the exit process takes years, the US under President Trump has been sending delegations to these meetings, as the US remains a party to the agreement. But other negotiating teams have accused the US of making it harder to resolve thorny issues<\/a> like how countries afflicted by the consequences of climate change should be compensated, although the US was aiming to exit the Paris accord altogether. Members of the US delegation have even used the meetings to promote the use of coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has argued that the terms of the Paris agreement demanded too much of the US and too little of countries like China that have set anemic goals, even though the agreement allows countries to set their own targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last 15 years, U.S. emissions have decreased while China\u2019s have continued to increase,\u201d said a State Department spokesperson in an email. \u201cChina claims status as a \u2018developing country\u2019 to avoid shouldering its fair share of responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions\u2014even though its per capita CO2 emissions have reached the level of many high-income countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the while, the planet has continued to heat up. Though global greenhouse gas emissions were down slightly this year<\/a> due to the pandemic, the overall trend is still upward and doesn\u2019t show any signs of reversing. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have continued to set new records<\/a> every year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Greenhouse gas emissions have slowed their rate of increase, but not reversed. Our World in Data<\/p><\/div>\n

The US can get back into the Paris agreement pretty easily, but domestic politics will still be a big hurdle<\/h3>\n

Getting back into the Paris accord, on paper, would pretty simple for Biden if he wins the election. According to Andrew Light, a former senior climate advisor at the State Department under President Obama, all Biden would have to do is send a notice to the United Nations as soon as he gets into office stating that the United States intends to get back in the agreement. Then 30 days later, the US is back in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more difficult part is that every party to the Paris agreement has to have a commitment that\u2019s in good standing,\u201d Light said. The initial commitment the US made in 2015, known as its nationally determined contribution<\/a>, aimed to get the US to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent below its emissions in 2005 by the year 2025.<\/p>\n

But by 2020, countries are expected to come up with targets aimed at 2030, and the US is behind on putting its goals together. \u201cBy Inauguration Day, the US is sort of technically overdue on this,\u201d Light said.<\/cite><\/p>\n

The US will likely have to meet some of its previous commitments, too. In 2014, the US pledged to contribute $3 billion to the United Nations\u2019 Green Climate Fund<\/a>, a program that helps developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. But under Trump, the US declined to fulfill its remaining $2 billion contribution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While other parties to the Paris agreement will likely cut the US some slack, it does mean the US needs to come up with a more ambitious goal than what it has already and start laying out the details for how it will get there.<\/p>\n

Trump has no plan to deal with climate change, but Biden has put forth an ambitious set of proposals<\/a> to get the United States to a 100 percent clean energy economy by 2050. Some of these plans can be enacted from the White House, but the more aggressive tactics, like $1.7 trillion in federal investment to drive action on climate change, would require Congress\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

That means those in control of the House and Senate will determine just how much Biden can enact his agenda domestically, which in turn will constrain what he can bring to the table internationally.<\/p>\n

For Biden, it may be a familiar situation. The economic turmoil he would inherit in January 2021 would likely echo what he saw in January 2009 as vice president, with an ongoing recession and huge job losses. The Covid-19 pandemic has similarly triggered an economic slowdown and a massive surge in unemployment<\/a>, so there may be appetite for a stimulus package with a focus on climate change in the new Congress.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s different this time around is that there is a much stronger grassroots activist movement<\/a> for action on climate change than there was in 2009. There\u2019s also a coalition of city, state, and business leaders<\/a> in the US who have remained committed to limiting climate change under the Trump administration despite the impending US exit from the Paris agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that Biden has that really is his ace on this is the fact that non-federal actors in the US have just been going all out since Trump announced the US is pulling out of Paris,\u201d Light said. \u201cThat will be a much more secure foundation, and a well-coordinated foundation, for Biden to work with, way more than Obama had in 2009.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the world is moving ahead on climate change, with or without the US<\/h3>\n

While the US has wavered in its commitment to fighting climate change, other countries have been charging ahead. So if the US were to rejoin the Paris climate agreement under Biden, it would enter an escalating race between the biggest economies on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scene is not the same as when the US withdrew three years ago,\u201d said Laurence Tubiana<\/a>, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris agreement. \u201cThe US coming back, or not, to the global landscape of climate action will find a different distribution of relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

For one thing, the technologies needed to shift to clean energy have made huge strides. Renewable energy<\/a> is now the largest source of new power generation<\/a> in the US, and in many markets, it\u2019s competitive with \u2014 if not cheaper than \u2014 fossil fuels. Similar patterns have been repeating across the world<\/a>. Meanwhile, major oil companies have been struggling<\/a> with flat demand and limited new investments. In the US, numerous coal companies have declared bankruptcy and more than 100 gigawatts of coal generation capacity<\/a> have been slated to shutter in the past decade, despite Trump\u2019s efforts to prop up the industry.<\/p>\n

In the international arena, it\u2019s true that some countries have been able to obscure their own tepid climate change plans in the shadow of the pending withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Countries like Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia have put forward weak commitments and have continued pushing the development and export of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, other nations have decided that fighting climate change will be a key part of their economic strategy in the decades to come.<\/p>\n

\n
\n