President Joe Biden signs multiple executive orders on his first day of presidency. photo courtesy of James Watson
President Joe Biden rejoins the Paris Climate Agreement, an effort to tackle climate change.
The Paris Climate Agreement is widely known as an effort to fight against climate change that was adopted by almost 200 nations in December of 2015. This agreement requires all countries involved to efficiently and effectively address severe global climate change by making changes in their actions to help the environment and making Earth a more sustainable place to live.
The Paris Agreement demands that all countries reduce their carbon emissions in order to cut down global greenhouse gas outflow to attenuate the international increase in temperature. The United States joined this agreement while 44th President Barack Obama was still in office. The agreement went into full effect about two months after the United States officially joined in September of 2016.
This agreement is extremely important for all countries to be a part of, most importantly because most threats to the climate are coming from humans and their actions, including the greenhouse effect—a phenomenon in which a collection of gasses trap heat from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The release of these gasses is to blame for rising temperatures, and these emissions are caused by humans. The drastic change in the climate also affects human health, as temperatures can cause changes in necessary resources, such as food, water, and shelter.
In June of 2017, President Donald Trump claimed that he would pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, and in November of 2020, after the presidential election, the United States officially withdrew from the agreement. While this had upset many, there was no need to worry because for one, all of the other countries stayed in the agreement and claimed that they would make up for what the United States would be responsible for. In addition, President Joe Biden would still be allowed to rejoin when he was inaugurated on January 20th, 2021.
On his first day of presidency, Biden promised America that he would rejoin the Paris Agreement, reversing Trump’s withdrawal, to fully fight for and protect our dying climate. He claimed that he will do more than just rejoining the accord because one of his top priorities as president is protecting our fragile environment. This is evident in his support of the Green New Deal—a congressional plan for tackling climate change while most importantly focusing on how the environment affects the economy, poverty, and racial injustice—and plans on launching his own plan, The Biden Plan, to guarantee that by 2050 the United States will have a “100% clean energy economy.”
It is especially important that the United States rejoins this agreement because without all possible nations joining together to tackle the crisis of climate change, nothing substantial will happen, since every country is responsible for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Although it will take 30 days after Biden sends a letter to the United Nations for the United States to fully re-enter in this agreement, this positive promise has held Biden up to his supporter’s standards.
