President Joe Biden signs executive orders at the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, following his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States, on January 20, 2021.
Tom Brenner | Reuters
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to rejoin the United States in the Paris climate deal, his first major action to address global warming as it incorporates the White House largest team of climate change experts.
The Biden administration also intends to cancel permission for the construction of Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. and sign additional orders in the coming days to reverse several of former President Donald Trump’s actions that weaken the environmental protections.
Biden promises to make rapid progress in action against climate change and his inclusion of scientists across the government marks the start of a major political investment after four years of the Trump administration’s weakening of climate rules in favor of climate change. fossil fuel producers.
Almost every country in the world is a party to the Paris Agreement, the non-binding agreement of reference between nations to reduce their carbon emissions. Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2017.
Mitchell Bernard, chairman of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Biden’s order to rejoin the agreement makes the U.S. a part of the global solution to climate change rather than part of the problem.
“This is a swift and decisive action,” Bernard said in a statement. “It sets the stage for the comprehensive action we need to address the climate crisis now, while there is still time to act.”
With a meager Democratic majority in the Senate, Biden could achieve much of his ambitious climate agenda, including a $ 2 trillion economic plan to drive a clean energy transition, reduce carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035, and achieve zero net emissions in 2050.
During his first months in office, Biden is expected to sign a wave of executive orders to address climate change, including the conservation of 30% of America’s land and water by 2030, the protection of the National Refuge of Arctic Wildlife Drilling and Restoration and Elevating the Role of Science in Government Decisions.
Some legal action on the climate will take longer, including the administration’s plan to reverse a series of Trump’s environmental setbacks on the rules governing clean air and water and emissions from global warming. The Trump administration reversed more than 100 environmental standards in four years, according to a Columbia Law School investigation.
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“From Paris to Keystone to protecting gray wolves, these huge first moves by President Biden prove he is serious about stopping climate and extinction crises,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. in a statement. “These strong steps must be the start of a furious race to avert disaster.”
The next major United Nations climate summit will take place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. The countries in the agreement will provide updated emission targets for the next decade.
The goal of the deal is to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to pre-industrial levels. The Earth will heat up 1.5 C or 2.7 F over the next two decades.
Robert Schuwerk, North American executive director of Carbon Tracker, said the union’s agreement indicates to global markets that the US will make the fight against climate change a priority, but added that it is only a part of what the administration needs to do to reduce its emissions.
The United States is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China. It is expected to have an updated climate target and a concrete plan to reduce emissions from the electricity and energy sector.
“Meeting is just a table bet,” said John Morton, who was President Barack Obama’s director of energy and climate on the National Security Council. “The hard work of putting the country towards zero net emissions in the middle of the century begins now.”