Paris Agreement: The US is leaving the global climate pact – what happens next?

Cheers erupted from the crowd at the Washington, D.C., stadium on January 20, when US President Donald Trump signed an order on stage withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Treaty. the to request He said that this step is in the interest of putting “America first.” But environmental groups condemned the decision, saying that leaving the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases from the agreement would exacerbate climate damage while ceding US influence in global negotiations to its rival clean energy juggernaut, China.

“This is an issue where the United States and the Trump administration are shooting themselves in the foot,” he says. David Wasko At the World Resources Institute, a global environmental nonprofit. “It will marginalize the United States.”

This is the second time Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, the landmark agreement agreed in 2015 to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Due to UN treaty rules, the first exit in 2017 took three years to become official, and the US only left a few months before former US President Joe Biden rejoined the country in 2021.

This time, the rules of the agreement stipulate that it will take a year for the withdrawal to become official, at which point the United States will be the only major economy not party to the agreement. Other countries that did not sign the agreement are Libya, Yemen and Iran.

“This is certainly not good news for international climate action,” he says. What? At the Asian Community Policy Institute in Washington, DC. He says that unlike the first time the US withdrew, this second exit comes at a time when the country’s appetite for ambitious emissions cuts was already facing geopolitical, social and economic hurdles. Last year saw record global emissions, while the rise in average global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time.

A US exit would leave the country without any leverage to push for deeper emissions cuts, and could create an excuse for countries around the world to reduce their climate commitments. “Climate momentum around the world, even before Trump was elected, was flagging,” Lee says.

However, Waskow says a US withdrawal would not mean a “bottom falling out” in global climate action. Countries accounting for more than 90 percent of global emissions remain committed to the Paris Agreement. He says wind, solar, electric cars, batteries and other clean technologies also now play a much larger role in the global economy than they did the first time the United States pulled out.

“The rest of the world is transitioning to clean energy,” he says. Manish is our father At the Natural Resources Defense Council, an American environmental advocacy group. “This will slow this transition, not stop it.” But he says it raises the question about the role the United States will play in shaping this future.

Looming over the horizon is China, which dominates many major clean energy industries, from solar panels to batteries, and is increasingly exporting its technology to the rest of the world. “The United States will not only give up its influence on how those markets are shaped, it will give up the duration of those markets,” Wasko says. “I don’t think other countries will think of the United States first when they think about who to deal with.”

The rollback on global climate action also comes as the new Trump administration has moved quickly to reverse, abandon or block the previous administration’s policies in a flurry of executive orders issued on its first day in office. These include a ban on federal permits for wind energy, and a rollback of policies put in place by Biden to encourage the use of electric vehicles. Others aim to expand fossil fuel development on federal lands, coastal waters and in Alaska and increase natural gas exports to solve another problem. announces It is a “national energy emergency.” “We’re going to dig, baby, dig,” he said in his inaugural address.