With U.S. officially out of climate pact, friends, foes press on
WASHINGTON— At the stroke of midnight Wednesday, when the United States became the only country to formally quit the Paris Agreement, the global accord designed to avert catastrophic climate change, it fulfilled a campaign promise that Donald Trump made four years ago.
But a lot has happened in those four years.
The costs of climate disasters have grown. Banks and investors have begun to turn away from fossil fuels as the price of renewable energy drops precipitously. Not least, key U.S. allies have rushed to stake out their own climate action targets. Britain, the European Union, Japan and South Korea have all said they would aim to neutralize their own emissions of planet-warming gases by 2050. And, in a shrewd move to outshine whoever is the next occupant of the White House, China, too, announced its own net-zero ambitions.
“The rest of the world has confirmed it will not stop action on climate change,” said Lois M. Young, the ambassador of Belize to the United Nations who, as chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, represents some of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rise.
Young said she hoped the United States would recommit to the Paris deal in order to minimize the worst climate risks facing countries like hers. “That the country that has contributed the most to climate change is now formally outside of the Paris Agreement, and may remain so for at least the next four years, is an appalling thought,” she said.
Teresa Ribera, Spain’s environment minister, said election results would demonstrate whether the United States becomes “a confrontational power or a constructive power” on climate change.
It was not lost on Ribeira, a veteran of international climate negotiations, that Washington has flip-flopped before, notably on the Kyoto Protocol.
The United States joined that global climate treaty in1997 under the Bill Clinton administration and withdrew in 2001 under then-president George W. Bush.
Todd Stern, who served as climate change envoy under president Barack Obama, echoed that. After four years of an American president who denounced the Paris Agreement and mocked climate science, he said, it won’t be easy to suddenly make demands of other nations.
“I think the most important thing for the United States is to come out very strong and decisively on the domestic side,” Stern said. “We have to demonstrate that this really is a very high priority and that the new president is moving full speed ahead.”
Stern said rebuilding trust would require broad diplomatic outreach and aggressive climate action domestically. The U.S. ability to do that depends not only on who is the next president but also on the composition of the Senate, which remains in the balance, too.
According to Carbon Brief, a climate analysis site, the announcements by the European Union, China, Japan and South Korea put nearly half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions under net-zero emissions targets, which means they would eliminate as much climate pollution as they emit into the atmosphere.
That is, of course, minus the United States.
“The world has moved on,” said Byford Tsang, who follows climate diplomacy for the London-based research organization E3G. “This election wouldn’t change the direction of global climate action, but it can change the pace of global climate action.”
Biden has said he would spend $2 trillion over four years to rapidly move away from coal, oil and gas and has set a goal of eliminating fossil fuel emissions from electricity generation by 2035. By mid-century, Biden has vowed, the entire U.S. economy would be carbon neutral.
That, combined with pledges from other nations, could make it realistic to meet the Paris Agreement goal of holding global temperatures to safe levels. The accord is structured around a kind of global peer pressure. Every country sets its own targets for slowing down its emissions growth or, in the case of industrialized economies, reducing emissions.
Biden has made no specific promises regarding the Paris Agreement, other than that he would recommit the United States to its goals and “go much further.” He has said he would “lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up their ambition of their domestic climate targets” and “stop countries from cheating.”