The United States officially returned to the Paris global climate agreement on Friday, and American leaders declared that the country could not afford to put the growing climate crisis out of the picture again.
“Climate change and scientific diplomacy can never again be ‘complementary’ to our foreign policy discussions,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement in what was expected to be a day of publicizing the Biden government to audiences. Global and domestic concerns about the new US commitment to reducing climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions.
“Facing the real threats of climate change and listening to our scientists is at the heart of our domestic and foreign policy priorities,” said Blinken. “It is vital in our discussions on national security, migration, international health efforts and in our economic diplomacy and trade negotiations.”
Officially, the removal of the nation by President Donald Trump from the global climate pact stayed for only 107 days. It was part of Trump’s withdrawal from global alliances in general and his often stated, but false, vision that the current global warming was a ridiculously wrong view of scientists in the world.
Although Friday’s return is strongly symbolic, world leaders say they expect the United States to prove its seriousness after four years that are practically absent. They are especially anticipating a US announcement in the coming months about their goal of reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2030.
The US returns to the Paris agreement it became official on Friday, almost a month after President Joe Biden told the United Nations that America wants to go back. “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,” said Biden in his inaugural speech. “A cry that cannot be more desperate or clearer now.”
Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office reversing the withdrawal ordered by Trump. The Trump administration announced its withdrawal of the Paris agreement in 2019, but did not enter into force until November 4, 2020, the day after the election, because of the provisions of the agreement.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that the official American re-entry “is in itself very important”, as well as Biden’s announcement that the United States will again provide climate aid to the poorest nations, as promised in 2009.
“It is the political message that is being sent,” said Christiana Figueres, the former United Nations climate chief. It was one of the main forces in the elaboration of the mainly voluntary agreement of 2015, in which nations define their own goals to reduce greenhouse gases.
One fear was that other nations would follow the United States in abandoning the fight for climate, but none did, Figueres said. She said the real problem was four years of climate inaction by the Trump administration. American cities, states and companies still worked to reduce the heat-trapping carbon dioxide, but without the federal government.
“From the point of view of political symbolism, whether it’s 100 days or four years, it’s basically the same thing,” said Figueres. “It is not a matter of how many days. It is the political symbolism that the biggest economy refuses to see the opportunity to address climate change. “
“We lost a lot of time,” said Figueres.
The director of the United Nations Environment Program, Inger Andersen, said that America has to prove its leadership to the rest of the world, but she said she will have no doubt that she will when she presents her emission reduction targets. The Biden government promises to announce them ahead of an Earth Day summit in April.
“We hope that they will translate into a very significant reduction in emissions and be an example to be followed by other countries,” said Guterres. More than 120 nations, including China, the main emitter, have already pledged to have zero net carbon emissions by the middle of the century.
University of Maryland environment professor Nate Hultman, who worked on the Obama administration’s official Paris target, said he expects a 2030 target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by between 40% and 50% from baseline levels of 2005.
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy panel, criticized Biden for returning to Paris, tweeting: “Returning to the Paris climate deal will increase Americans’ energy costs and will not solve climate change. The Biden government will set impractical goals for the United States, while China and Russia can continue their business normally.
A long-standing international target, included in the Paris agreement with an even stricter target, is to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since that time.
US adherence to the Paris agreement and the presentation of an ambitious emission reduction target would make limiting warming “well below 2 degrees – not just 2 degrees, but below 2 degrees – much more likely,” said the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, energy and climate director at the Breakthrough Institute.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
___
Read The Associated Press climate stories at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.
___
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.