The United States (US) left the Paris accord on Wednesday, becoming the first country to ever withdraw from an international climate change pact as the fate of its presidential election hangs in the balance.
With the results still swinging, it may prove to be a temporary blip before Democrat Joe Biden’s administration rejoins the agreement if he emerges victorious in the yet to be concluded poll.
If results go Trump’s way the global effort to rein in the Earth’s warming will have to proceed without the government of the world’s second-biggest carbon emitter. Either way, it all depends on the outcome of a knife-edge vote where both candidates have predicted victory.
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Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion plan to take the US to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, while President Donald Trump has aggressively championed the fossil fuel industry, questioned the science of climate change, and weakened other environmental protections. If Trump wins, it will be left to states, cities, and businesses to take the lead.
However, a report last month by the group America’s Pledge found that even without help from Washington, action from these groups would still make it possible for the US to cut emissions by 37 percent by 2030. ‘The easy part, relatively speaking, is to send a notification to the UN that the United States intends to rejoin the Paris Agreement,’ Andrew Light, a climate advisor to former President Barack Obama, was quoted as saying.
The US will still be ‘outside the conversation’ when Britain and the UN host a climate summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of Paris, but poised to re-engage. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in order to have a chance of keeping end-of-century warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), global emissions need to reach net-zero around mid-century. The target warming level was chosen to avoid triggering a series of catastrophic climate tipping points that could force humanity to inhabit only the planet’s far north and south latitudes.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
