WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States left the Paris accord on Wednesday, becoming the first country to ever withdraw from an international climate change pact, but Joe Biden vowed he would immediately return as president.
With election results pointing to a likely defeat for Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election, Biden took on the tone of a president-elect and made clear that climate was a top priority.
“Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it,” tweeted Biden, who would take the presidential oath on Jan 20.
Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion-plan to take the US, the world’s second biggest carbon emitter, to net zero by 2050.
Trump has aggressively championed the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change and weakened other environmental protections.
However, a report last month by the group America’s Pledge found that even without help from Washington, action from cities, states and businesses would still make it possible for the US to cut emissions by 37 percent by 2030.
Trump gave a one-year notice to leave the Paris accord on Nov 4, 2019. Biden would need to officially notify the UN of US willingness to return.
The US will still be “outside the conversation” when Britain and the UN host a climate summit on Dec 12, the fifth anniversary of Paris, but poised to re-engage.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in order to have a chance of keeping end-of-century warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), global emissions need to reach net zero around 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 planet’s far north and south latitudes.
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 temperature increase in the order of 0.1°C.
“This election could be a make or break point for international climate policy. Every tenth of a degree counts,” he said.
Environmentalists say Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw from the Paris agreement three years ago made it easier for countries such Australia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil to weaken their own ambitions.
Many of the ravaging impacts of climate change are already felt today: loss of sea ice, with the Arctic expected to be ice-free by mid-century; accelerated sea level rise, longer and more intense droughts and heat waves, stronger hurricanes and shifts in precipitation patterns.
Small island nations face being completely submerged.
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 strong and active Paris Agreement remains unchanged,” he added. — NNN-AGENCIES
