United States officially joins the Paris Climate Agreement

The United States officially joined the Paris climate agreement on Friday – nearly a month after President Biden said the United States had once again accepted the terms of the agreement.

Former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal. He said it was ineffective because it allows countries to voluntarily limit their own pollution and seeks to keep the United States and other industrialized countries at a higher level.

Although Trump said in 2017 that the United States was pulling out, this move was largely symbolic and only really happened last year after a one-year United Nations notification period.

UN officials have applauded the return of the United States – although Biden’s climate team, led by John Kerry, seek to help craft a more ambitious pact at a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that “this in itself is very important,” and former UN global warming chief Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press that “it ‘ is the political message that is being sent ”.

Biden issued a statement on his first day in office last month: “I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, having seen and reviewed the Paris Agreement, done in Paris on the 12th December 2015, I hereby accept said Agreement and every section and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America. “

The reinstatement has little immediate effect on the United States, but complements other Biden initiatives from the first month to hamper industries that extract fossil fuels. It also canceled construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and banned future permits for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

China, the largest emitter of carbon, is also a member of the 2016 accord – but Trump scoffed at the idea that the authoritarian state would voluntarily reduce its own pollution. The United States scrapped the deal amid negotiations on how countries should implement a new transparency regime.

“What we won’t do is punish the American people while making foreign polluters rich,” Trump said in 2019 at a conference on the shale gas industry in Pennsylvania.