US officially rejoins Paris Climate accord reversing another Donald Trump move

The United States of America officially rejoined the Paris Climate accord Friday, February 19, at least 107 days after it had quit the pact under Donald Trump. While Joe Biden had successfully fulfilled the promise he made on the first day of his presidency, global leaders are now anticipating the US to iron out a pathway for cutting greenhouse emission by 2030 and bringing them to net-zero emission by 2050.

The Paris Climate Agreement has always been in the Centre stage of Biden’s plan of action. On his first day in the office itself, Biden had signed an executive order for rejoining the 2015 accord. “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,” Biden had said in his inaugural address. “A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear now.”

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In the aftermath, Laurence Tubiana, France’s Climate Change Ambassador and Special Representative for COP21 and CEO of the European Climate Foundation hailed the US re-entry but added a note of caution that “the climate crisis is deepening”. Stressing that they did not have “time to celebrate”, she said that the climate crisis was deepening adding that they needed all major polluters to deliver plans for a safe, clean and prosperous future. “The US needs to come to COP26 with a strong commitment: the urgency of the crisis is clear, and this means a new US target of at least 50% GHG cuts on 2005 levels by 2030, ideally more,” she told media reporters.

What is the Paris Climate Accord?

Paris Climate Accord or Paris Agreement of 2015 is a legally binding global treaty to tackle the issue of climate change that, according to experts, is at an alarming level. It was adopted by at least 196 Parties at the COP 21 in Paris on December 12, 2015, and finally came into force on November 4, 2016. The Agreement had tied the parties to achieve an ambitious goal of limiting global warming to well below 2, “preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.” Therefore, the UNFCCC had also stated that in order to achieve the long-term goal, the member nations had to aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and subsequently achieve climate neutral world by mid-century. 

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