US rejoins pact but must repair reputation

The United States yesterday officially rejoined the Paris climate accord to stop the world from warming past a critical climate change threshold – a global average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Now the Biden Administration will try to make up for lost time and repair the country’s standing among nations in the global fight against climate change, after President Donald Trump made the US the only nation to drop out of the accord. Trump spent years disparaging the global scientific consensus that human activity is causing the planet to warm.

Soon after being sworn in, US President Joe Biden sent a letter to the United Nations kickstarting the 30-day process for rejoining the 2015 accord.

``It’s good to have the US back in the Paris agreement, but sadly, we have no time to celebrate,’’ said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation.

``The climate crisis is deepening, and this is the year we need all major polluters to step up and deliver stronger plans to deliver a safe, clean and prosperous future for everyone.’’

The Biden Administration plans to ratchet up the US’s commitments to reducing emissions while pressing emerging economies such as China and India to curtail construction of coal-fired power plants, and Brazil to preserve more of the Amazon rainforest.

At the same time, Biden will have to contend with a deeply divided Congress and other competing factions as his Administration crafts a regulatory and legislative agenda for cutting emissions.

Biden has kicked off the process of setting a new national goal for cutting emissions that is more ambitious than Barack Obama’s target of slashing carbon emissions by about a quarter below 2005 levels by 2025. But analysts say the US is at risk of missing even that goal, after Trump eased regulations that would have reined in carbon pollution.