`Trump Pulls U.S. Out of Paris Climate Accords, Again - Olive Oil Times

Trump Pulls U.S. Out of Paris Climate Accords, Again

By Daniel Dawson
Jan. 21, 2025 22:31 UTC

Newly inau­gu­rated President Donald J. Trump quickly announced that the world’s sec­ond-largest green­house gas emit­ter would again leave the Paris Climate Accord.

President Trump will with­draw from the Paris Climate Accord,” the White House wrote in an email list­ing the administration’s new pol­icy pri­or­i­ties within 30 min­utes of his swear­ing-in, the Financial Times reports.

The announce­ment comes days after the World Meteorological Organization con­firmed 2024 was the hottest year on record, exceed­ing the pre-indus­trial global aver­age tem­per­a­ture by 1.55 ºC.

See Also:What 485 Million Years of Climate History Tell Us About Today’s Crisis

The sig­na­to­ries of the Paris Agreement ini­tially com­mit­ted to reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions to keep global tem­per­a­tures within 2 ºC of the pre-Industria aver­age.

During his first term, Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 deal signed by almost 200 coun­tries. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., reversed this deci­sion after his 2020 elec­tion vic­tory.

President Trump made the deci­sion to with­draw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair eco­nomic bur­den imposed on American work­ers, busi­nesses and tax­pay­ers by U.S. pledges made under the agree­ment,” then‑U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in 2019, explain­ing the deci­sion.

While U.S. green­house gas emis­sions fell by 2.5 per­cent dur­ing the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion – largely attrib­ut­able to wide­spread stay-at-home orders at the start of the Covid-19 pan­demic – $2 (€1.77) bil­lion pledged to help devel­op­ing coun­tries mit­i­gate cli­mate change impacts was can­celed.

It took three years from Trump’s 2017 announce­ment to for­mal­ize his depar­ture from the agree­ment. However, in the inter­ven­ing time, he sent nego­tia­tors to United Nations cli­mate talks to pro­mote fos­sil fuels. He stopped fund­ing the Clean Power Plan, International Climate Change Program and Cooperation on Climate Change Research.

This time, the U.S. will leave the agree­ment one year after the Trump admin­is­tra­tion sends a let­ter announc­ing its depar­ture. It remains unclear whether the admin­is­tra­tion has already done this.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric and poli­cies, the U.S. met its first nation­ally deter­mined con­tri­bu­tion tar­get under the Paris Agreement: a 17 per­cent reduc­tion of 2005 green­house gas lev­els by 2020.

See Also:Olive Trees Can Help Beat Climate Change

However, meet­ing the updated goal of reduc­ing 2005 green­house gas lev­els by 61 per­cent by 2030, announced by Biden in December, will be far more chal­leng­ing, requir­ing emis­sions to fall by at least 3.13 bil­lion met­ric tons from their 2023 lev­els.

While many sci­en­tists, activists and Democrats have reacted to the news with dis­may, oth­ers believe the pri­vate sec­tor will con­tinue to invest in renew­able energy and cli­mate-friendly tech­nol­ogy.

Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation’s chief exec­u­tive who worked closely on the Paris Agreement, told AP News that the planned U.S. with­drawal is unfor­tu­nate. Still, the con­text is dif­fer­ent this time around.

There is unstop­pable eco­nomic momen­tum behind the global tran­si­tion, which the U.S. has gained from and led but now risks for­feit­ing,” he said.

Kaveh Guilanpour, the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tional strate­gies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, was less opti­mistic.

He told HuffPost that the deci­sion was deeply regret­table” and once again iso­lated the U.S. out­side the inter­na­tional con­sen­sus.

There is no sugar-coat­ing this — it will be harm­ful to global efforts to com­bat cli­mate change, and so ulti­mately, also harm­ful to the future pros­per­ity and secu­rity of U.S. cit­i­zens,” Guilanpour said.



Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles