US Exits Global Climate Pact Amid Election Uncertainty

By Staff, Agencies

The United States formally exited the Paris climate accord, becoming the sole outlier in global efforts to slow down climate change.

“The US withdrawal will leave a gap in our regime, and the global efforts to achieve the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said on Wednesday.

Espinosa said the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], which the United States still remains a party to, would be “ready to assist the US in any effort in order to rejoin the Paris Agreement.”

The announcement came a day after the US presidential election, in which Donald Trump is seeking a second term.

Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, vowed to rejoin the agreement if elected. He has also promised to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 under a sweeping 2-trillion-dollar plan to transform the economy.

The administration of former president Barack Obama had pledged under the deal to cut US emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels.

Biden is broadly expected to ramp up those goals if elected.

Meanwhile, the Rhodium Group has said that in 2020, the United States will be at around 21 percent below the 2005 levels. It says that under a second Trump administration, it expects US emissions to increase by more than 30 percent through 2035 from 2019 levels.

Trump first announced his intention to pull the United States out of the global agreement to fight climate change in June 2017, characterizing the decision as “a reassertion of American sovereignty.”

The move drew rebuke from Democrats at home and world leaders who had pressed Trump not to abandon the 197-nation accord.

However, he was unable to formally do so until now because of the requirements of the deal.

In November 2019, the United States presented its withdrawal letter to the United Nations, saying it would be officially out of the Paris accord on November 4, 2020, one day after the US election.

Trump has labeled climate change a “hoax,” defying widening international support for the Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. He has argued that the concept of global warming has been “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”