US Has Formally Withdrawn From the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

The US has formally withdrawn from the Paris agreement on climate change. It is the first to do so, after three years of delay. The move was announced by President Trump last June in 2017, but the regulations of the agreement have a built-in delay stipulation.

The agreement was written in 2015 as a means to combat climate change on a global scale. Its aim is to maintain global ambient temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above levels existing in pre-industrial times.

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The cause of the delay

Complex rules built into this agreement ensures that a withdrawal will be hard to do.

US internal politics have previously prevented attempts to put together such agreements. During the Clinton administration, Senate approval for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was not obtained.

This caused the Paris negotiators of former President Obama to ensure that the US will not be able to easily withdraw when the transition of leadership eventually occurs.

The agreement was implemented last November 4 in 2016, although it was already signed in December of 2015. This is because 30 days are needed after a minimum of 55 countries that cause 55% of emissions worldwide ratified it.

No countries in the agreement can announce its move to leave earlier than three years from ratification. After that, the country needs to issue a one-year notice. This means that after President Trump made the announcement last June 2017, the formal notice to the UN can only be done in November 2019.

The implications of the withdrawal

The United States causes approximately 15% of all emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide. It is still the most powerful and largest economy in the world.

In the last three years, negotiators from the US participated in climate talks in the UN, while at the same time, the administration used the events in promoting the use of fossil fuels.

This makes the US look untrustworthy, and it hurts its reputation, according to the Obama administration's former senior climate change official Andrew Light. He says that it is a problem because the US failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and now it left the Paris Agreement.

Wrong decision

For Americans who think climate change is the largest challenge in the world and that their country should be at the forefront in fighting it, leaving the Paris agreement is a disappointment.

Leaving is a wrong decision, according to Helen Mountford of the World Resources Institute.

Alliance of Small Island States lead negotiator Carlos Fuller says they worked hard in ensuring that all countries will get to agree to the agreement. He says that losing a country means they failed.

However, the US can join again, and in fact, Joe Biden promised that he will make it so should he win as President.

Supporters of US withdrawal

Some, however, are happy with the decision to withdraw, because, together with Trump, they see the agreement as unfair because other countries such as China and India can freely use fossil fuels even if the US needs to curb carbon emissions.

According to Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst Katie Tubb, reducing temperatures cannot be done at the expense of industrialized nations. This is why she disapproves of the Paris agreement on climate change.

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Tags paris agreement, climate change