The United States and the Paris Climate Agreement

Reported by: Bryn Heikes

The United States has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the treaty in November of last year.

Since being sworn into office, President Joe Biden made it a priority to rejoin the 189 nations participating in the deal, signing the executive order on his first day in office.

Here is a brief look at the Paris Climate Agreement, the history of U.S. involvement, and the effects of Biden’s ambitious climate strategy.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the PCA is essentially a treaty between nations focused on significantly reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Their overall goal is to limit global warming in the next ten years to 2 degrees Celsius (approximately 35 degrees Fahrenheit). The agreement was formed in December of 2015, but didn’t take effect until November 2016. Former President Barack Obama officially joined the Paris Climate Agreement two months prior in September.

Trump, who repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax over the course of his presidency, formally withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement in November of 2020, after announcing his intentions to do so three years prior.

Biden formally rejoined the agreement during his first day in office: January 20, 2021. This is part of Biden’s aggressive climate approach, which aims to turn the U.S. into a 100% clean energy economy achieving net-zero emissions by the year 2050. In order to reach this milestone, Biden plans to place limits on methane emissions on three of the biggest culprits: cars, power plants, and gas and oil wells. This climate plan is clearly a 180-degree turn from that of the Trump administration, and is even more ambitious than former president Obama’s climate approach.

If Biden’s administration succeeds in achieving these climate goals, life as we know it will look very different by the year 2035. According to NPR, electricity would no longer be powered by fossil fuels, but by a combination of wind, solar and nuclear power. Cars would primarily be electric. The coal industry would no longer exist, replaced by jobs in the wind and solar power industry.

If these measures are successfully implemented, climate change groups are hopeful that the United States might experience fewer negative effects of increasing global temperatures, including wildfires, rising sea levels, and dramatic heat waves.