The United States officially returned to the Paris Climate Agreement on Friday – almost a month after President Biden declared that the United States again accepted the terms of the agreement.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal. He said it was ineffective because it allows countries to voluntarily contain their own pollution and seeks to keep the United States and other industrialized countries to a higher standard.
Although Trump said that in 2017 the U.S. was withdrawing, the change was largely symbolic and did not actually happen until last year, after a one-year notification period to the United Nations.
UN officials applauded the return of the United States – although Biden’s climate team, led by John Kerry, is working hard to help draft a more ambitious pact at a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland in November.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “it is very important in itself” 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 saying: “I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the Paris Agreement, done in Paris on December 12, 2015 , I hereby accept the said Agreement and all the articles and clauses thereof on behalf of the United States of America. “
The return has little immediate effect on the United States, but it complements other initiatives from Biden’s first month to prevent industries that extract fossil fuels. He also canceled the construction of Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline and banned future authorizations for drilling oil and gas on federal land.
China, the largest carbon emitter, is also a member of the 2016 deal – but Trump scoffed at the idea that the authoritarian state would voluntarily contain its own pollution. The United States abandoned the agreement amid negotiations on how countries should implement a new transparency regime.
“What we will not do is punish the American people while enriching foreign polluters,” Trump said in 2019 at a shale gas industry conference in Pennsylvania.