rejoins – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

The United States officially joined the Paris Agreement on Friday, the international treaty to avert catastrophic global warming.

President Biden said tackling the climate crisis was one of his top priorities and he signed an executive order re-committing the United States to the deal just hours after he took office last month.

“We can no longer delay the fight against climate change or do what is absolutely necessary,” said Biden on Friday. “This is a global existential crisis. And we will all face the consequences if we fail. “

It was a sharp rejection of the Trump administration, which had pulled the country out of the pact and appeared to be eager to undercut regulations to protect the environment.

“The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action,” Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken said in a statement on Friday. “We know because we helped design it and make it a reality.”

With around 189 countries joining the pact in 2016, it had broad international support, and Mr Biden’s move to rejoin the effort was welcomed by foreign leaders.

“Welcome back to the Paris Agreement!” Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, said in a Twitter message at the time.

The galvanizing idea of the Paris Climate Agreement is that only global solidarity and collective action can prevent the ravages of climate change: hotter temperatures, rising sea levels, stronger storms or droughts that lead to food shortages.

President Biden has announced a plan to spend $ 2 trillion over four years to increase the use of clean energy in transportation, electricity and buildings while rapidly moving away from coal, oil and gas. His goal is to eliminate fossil fuel emissions from power generation by 2035 and has vowed to put the entire U.S. economy on the right track to become carbon neutral by mid-century.

Former President Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, but the withdrawal could not be made official until November 4th last year.

The United States was officially excluded from the agreement for 107 days.

On Friday, Blinken said the fight against climate change would once again be at the center of the US domestic and foreign policy priorities.

“Climate change and science diplomacy can never again be” add-ons “in our foreign policy discussions,” said Blinken.

But he added: “As significant as our accession to the agreement in 2016 was – and as significant as our re-entry is today – what we do in the weeks, months and years to come is even more important.”

Since the industrial age began, the United States has emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country. The way the United States uses its money and power has both a symbolic and a real impact on whether the world’s 7.6 billion people, and the poorest in particular, will be able to avert climate disasters.

There are two immediate signals to watch out for. First, how ambitious will the Biden government be with its emissions reduction targets? Stakeholders are under pressure to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030 compared to 2005.

Second, how much money will the United States spend to help poor countries adapt to global warming disasters and turn their economies away from fossil fuels?

The answers to both questions are expected in the next few weeks, just in time for the virtual climate summit on April 22nd, which President Biden has announced.

President Joe Biden signs Executive Orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington upon his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to reintroduce the US to the Paris Agreement. This is his first major global warming move as it brings in the largest team of climate change experts to ever come to the White House.

The Biden administration also plans to revoke approval for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States and to sign additional contracts in the coming days to reverse several measures taken by former President Donald Trump to weaken the environment.

Biden pledges to act swiftly on climate change, and his inclusion of scientists across the government marks the beginning of a major political reversal after four years of the Trump administration weakening climate rules in favor of fossil fuel producers.

Almost every country in the world is part of the Paris Agreement, the non-binding agreement between nations to reduce their CO2 emissions. Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2017.

Mitchell Bernard, President of the Defense Council for Natural Resources, said Biden’s order to re-join the deal makes the US part of the global solution to climate change rather than part of the problem.

“This is a quick and determined action,” Bernard said in a statement. “It creates the conditions for comprehensive measures to deal with the climate crisis, as long as there is still time to act.”

With a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, Biden could potentially achieve large chunks of his ambitious climate change agenda, including a $ 2 trillion economic plan to drive a clean energy transition, cut electricity sector carbon emissions by 2035, and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

During his first few months in office, Biden is expected to sign a wave of executive orders to combat climate change, including preserving 30% of American land and waters by 2030, protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling, and restoring and enhancing the role of science in government decisions.

Some legal actions related to the climate will take longer, including the government’s plan to undo a number of Trump environmental setbacks related to clean air and water rules and emissions to warm the planet. The Trump administration reversed more than 100 environmental regulations in four years, according to research by Columbia Law School.

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“From Paris to Keystone to protecting gray wolves, these great first steps by President Biden show that he is serious about stopping the climate and extinction crises,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biodiversity, in a statement. “These strong steps must be the start of a furious race to avert disaster.”

The next major UN climate summit will take place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. The countries in the agreement will set updated emissions targets for the next decade.

The aim of the agreement is to keep the global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit compared to pre-industrial values. The earth will warm by 1.5 ° C in the next two decades.

Robert Schuwerk, executive director for North America at Carbon Tracker, said the resumption of the deal signals to global markets that the US will give priority to tackling climate change, but added that this is only part of what the government is doing must to reduce their emissions.

The USA is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world after China. It is expected that an updated climate target and a concrete plan for reducing emissions from the electricity and energy sectors will be available.

“Re-entry is just a table,” said John Morton, President Barack Obama’s director of energy and climate on the National Security Council. “The hard work to get the country on track to net zero emissions by the middle of the century begins now.”