The US leaves the Paris Agreement: what happens now with the climate fight?

Until November 4, only seven countries remained outside the Paris Agreement compared to the almost 190 that have adhered to this international pact against climate change. This Wednesday has been consummated the departure of Paris of the United States, which is thus aligned with Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Turkey and Yemen. However, none of them has the importance or contributed as much to generating the problem of global warming as the United States, the country that has expelled more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in history (although it is currently the second emitter behind China).

In April 2016, Barack Obama, then US president, ratified the Paris Agreement, which helped bring the treaty into force just four years ago today. But Republican Donald Trump, his successor and a furious detractor of all of Obama’s environmental policies, announced he would take his country out of the treaty. The exit has not been able to be made effective so far due to several clauses included in the climate agreement. And it can remain an anecdote in the event that Joe Biden manages to beat Trump in the presidential election. The Democrat has made it clear that he will return as soon as possible. These are some of the keys to what can happen from now on with the Paris Agreement and the international fight against global warming.

What is the Paris Agreement?

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries closed the Paris Agreement on December 12, 2015 in the French capital. It is the international pact that should replace the Kyoto Protocol, which dates back to 1997 and whose validity ends on December 31 of this year. Both treaties are the result of the development of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). Trump has only denounced the Paris Agreement, so the United States will remain part of the convention, as will 195 other countries (virtually all of the world).

The goal of the pact closed in the French capital five years ago is to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions necessary to make global warming, which is now irreversible, as unprotraceable as possible. The agreement sets as a goal that the increase in the average temperature of the planet does not exceed 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era and that as far as possible it remains below 1.5 (warming is already around 1 degree).

How are your goals achieved?

To achieve this goal, all acceding countries must submit plans to cut their emissions, which are known as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs). Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement obliges all signatories to cut their greenhouse gases; in the case of Kyoto, only developed countries should do so. But, in order to ensure that the United States did not fall out of the pact again, as happened with Kyoto, the Paris text was cleansed of binding formulas and concrete goals imposed by the treaty on the signatory countries. That is, the objective of each national cutting plan is set voluntarily by each government. Then, the sum of all those plans should put the planet on the path of 1.5 and 2 degrees. At the moment, the proposals of all the signatories are not enough and would lead to an increase in the average temperature of at least 3 degrees, according to United Nations calculations.

What are the effects of leaving the United States?

What happens with the Paris Agreement and the fight against climate change now depends largely on the election outcome in the UNITED States. If Biden wins, the U.S. could quickly return to the pact. “The United States can re-accede to the Paris Agreement at any time,” explains a spokesman for the UN climate change area. In his program, the Democrat assures that “day 1” of his mandate (which will start on January 20 if he wins) he will reincorporate his country into the treaty. If Biden uses the same route that Obama used to join in 2016 – an executive order – a month after issuing that rule the United States would be inside Paris again, as established by the agreement itself in its articles. That is, by February or March the United States could be back.

What plan of cuts does Biden propose?

The next question, which Biden has not clarified in his program, is the emissions cut plan (NDC) that the Democrat will set and the concrete goals. When the details of the Paris Agreement were being discussed in 2014, the Obama Administration set a 2025 cut target of between 26% and 28% from 2005 levels. To achieve this, his government had approved a clean energy program, which was stopped by the US Supreme Court first and then repealed by Trump. According to the consultancy Rhodium Group, in 2019 US emissions had fallen by 12.3% compared to 2005 levels. Biden has promised a two-trillion-dollar plan to boost renewables and the energy transition. He has committed to his country reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, although he has not yet set any specific targets for 2025 or 2030, which is the one that should appear in his country’s NDC.

What if Trump wins?

If Trump is re-elected there won’t be any big effect in the short term. The United States could even continue to participate in the annual negotiations since it remains a member of the UN convention on climate change, explain the same United Nations sources. This country will have to continue to submit its annual greenhouse gas inventories, for example. Of course, the federal government would not set as the vast majority of the world has done, emissions reduction targets.

The problem is that the United States is an essential actor in the fight against climate change. Essential because it accumulates almost 14% of all greenhouse gases in the world and because it is one of the countries that should most economically help the least developed States to face the negative consequences of a warming to which they have hardly contributed. The Paris Agreement also sets as a goal the mobilization of 100,000 million dollars a year to help countries with fewer resources and the United States should be one of the main contributors, something that Trump rejects outright.

Can there be a contagion effect?

Some analysts feared four years ago that the Paris Agreement would crumble after Trump’s slamming of the door. But there has been no contagion effect. The only one who has joined the explicit rejection of the treaty following in Trump’s footsteps has been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has refused to let his country (which accumulates 1.1% of global emissions) ratify it. The rest of those that have not joined are oil countries, such as Iran (1.9% of global emissions), Iraq (0.5%) and Libya (0.15%), or countries in serious difficulties such as Eritrea, South Sudan and Yemen, with practically insignificant emissions on the international stage. This summer the Parliament of Angola, another of the countries that had not yet ratified the treaty, unanimously approved finally joining the Paris Agreement.

Trump’s departure has not prevented the European Union (9.13% of global emissions) from continuing to bet on the Paris Agreement and has committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 – that the balance between greenhouse gases emitted and those absorbed by sinks such as forests is zero. Neutrality by mid-century is essential to meet the 1.5 degree target. China (29.7% of emissions) also announced a few weeks ago that it will reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

What other actors are important?

The Trump team has carried out during its mandate an environmental counter-reform with the repeal of a hundred rules and limits on the dirtiest and most polluting activities. In addition, he has placed climate change deniers and people linked to the fossil fuel industry in key positions in major federal agencies— such as the Environmental Protection Agency. But, at the same time, within the United States, mayors and governors of many states have set goals for decarbonization and emission reductions. And a large number of multinationals have taken ownership of the objectives of the Paris Agreement. All of this, coupled with the increasingly competitive costs of renewables, somewhat limits the damage that four more years of Trump’s term could do to the fight against climate change.

Source: The Country