USA will officially leave the Paris Agreement a day after the elections

The United States will formally leave the Paris Agreement on climate change on Wednesday, November 4 of this year.

The Official U.S. Withdrawal of the list of countries that have ratified this agreement signed in Paris in 2015 will not occur however as a result of the results of the elections but by a coincidence in the calendar.

The Paris Agreement [written in capital letters not because of its importance, but because this is its official name] entered into force on November 4, 2016, just 30 days after the date on which more than 55 member countries of the UN Convention on Climate Change formally deposited the ratification document, acceptance, acceptance or adhesion.

One of the articles of the Paris Agreement states that no signatory country could request withdrawal until three years after the entry into force of this agreement (i.e. on November 4, 2019) and that, in the case of a request for withdrawal, it would not be effective until one year after its submission (i.e. no earlier than November 4, 2020).

Trump was very clear about it

On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump confirmed his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement but the formal processing of this withdrawal could not be carried out, for the reason indicated above, until November 4, 2019. Now, this Wednesday, November 4, 2020, when the name of the winner of the elections to the presidency of the United States may already be known, this country will have ceased to be formally a member of the Paris Agreement.

If Donald Trump wins the elections there is no doubt that his country will remain outside what was agreed in the French capital in December 2015.

If the winner is Joe Biden, things can be very different. In this case, the position of the United States will depend not only on the name of the president but also on the support he has in Congress and the Senate. The Biden-Harris team has reiterated its support for the fight against climate change and its commitment to the return of the United States to the Paris Agreement but its possible victory does not mean an immediate or automatic option in this regard.

Open political debate

Former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to reinstate his country to the Paris Agreement but this decision would need, as a first step, the approval of Congress, recalls the chronicle signed by the editor in science information of the AP agency Seth Borenstein.

“Experts say that three months, from November until the inauguration in January, with the United States out of the climate pact will not change the world, but four years will. If the United States withdraws from the Paris Agreement and carbon reduction efforts are strengthened, some nations are less likely to do so as well, so the impact of the withdrawal will be magnified, scientists and climate negotiators said, “says Borenstein.

“Losing most of the world’s coral reefs is something that would be difficult to avoid if the United States is left out of the Paris process,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, California.

If the United States remains outside the climate pact, today’s children “are going to see big changes that you and I don’t see in climate, ice and coral disasters,” said Rob Jackson of Stanford University.

The choice of Trump or Biden “could be a turning point for international climate policy,” said Niklas Hohne, a climate scientist at Wageningen University in Germany.

In the last TV debate between the two majority candidates and on his website, Joe Biden pledged to set a goal of net zero U.S. carbon emissions by 2050, meaning the country wouldn’t put more greenhouse gases in the air than it extracts through trees and other natural and technological sources.

As is known, Donald Trump maintains his doubts about the existence of climate change induced by human activities and continues to refuse to take climate protection measures that could harm – from his particular point of view – the industry and the economy as a whole.

Source: The Vanguard