The Paris Agreement: What Does Rejoining Really Mean for the United States?

Hours after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reentering the United States into the Paris Agreement, a worldwide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming. 

After former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2017, claiming it was a “disaster” for the country, Biden made it clear that addressing climate change would be one of his top priorities as president. In his inaugural address, he noted that “a cry for survival comes from the planet itself.”

From rising sea levels to extreme weather conditions, the increasing atmospheric temperature continues to harm our planet. The Paris Agreement aims to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately keeping the temperature below two degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial climate. According to NASA, if global warming causes a temperature increase of two degrees Celsius “more than 70 percent of Earth’s coastlines will see sea-level rise greater than 0.66 feet.” 

Since countries’ current laws are not enough to tackle climate change, the Paris Agreement calls for more ambitious actions called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). These NDCs are set every five years and establish the steps countries must take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the U.S. is currently the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitting country, Biden pledged to cut all emissions from the nation’s electric sector by 2035 and to make the United States carbon-neutral by 2050. In order to accomplish this goal, the U.S. must commit to phasing out fossil fuels and investing in more renewable energy sources. 

During his first day in office, Biden also took steps to reverse harmful environmental policies put in place by the Trump administration. One executive order instructed “all executive departments and agencies to immediately review and…take action to address the promulgation of Federal regulations” that are inconsistent with his climate policies. 

As mentioned in an article from Columbia University, Biden’s recent actions have “revoked Trump’s executive orders that weakened requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal operations, sped up environmental reviews, fast-tracked oil and gas pipelines, promoted offshore drilling, and removed protection for national monuments to allow for fossil fuel development.”

Although there was little action regarding climate change in the past four years, rejoining the Paris Agreement was a vital first step towards addressing climate change in the U.S., and it signaled to the rest of the world that the United States is committed to a greener future once again.