Washington | The United States officially returned to the Paris agreement on Friday, as President Joe Biden’s administration pledged to make the fight against climate change a high priority.
Almost four years after the announcement by Donald Trump of the withdrawal of the United States, this return of the world’s largest economy, the second largest emitter of C02, means that almost all the nations of the planet are today stakeholders of the agreement signed in 2015.
Joe Biden took office on January 20 and immediately decided on this return.
“Climate change and science-based diplomacy can never again be optional additions to our foreign policy discussions,” US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“Responding to the real threats of climate change and listening to our scientists is at the heart of our domestic and foreign priorities. It is (an aspect) vital in our discussions on national security, migration, international health measures, and in our economic diplomacy and trade negotiations ”, also indicated the Secretary of State.
Praising the Paris agreement, negotiated by former President Barack Obama, he further assured that the climate diplomacy that was looming would be crucial.
Former Secretary of State and candidate for the White House John Kerry, now the United States’ climate envoy, for his part called on the states of the planet to revise their climate ambitions upwards during of the UN summit in Glasgow (Scotland) which will take place in November.
Prior to that, Joe Biden planned to hold another climate summit on April 22 to coincide with Earth Day.
The US president has pledged to bring pollution levels in the US energy sector to zero by 2035, and to have the US economy achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, an ally of the fossil fuel industry, believed the Paris deal was unfair to the United States.
But the ambitions of the agreement are mostly non-binding, with each country developing its own measures. A point on which Barack Obama and John Kerry insisted when signing in 2015, concerned about the political opposition in the United States.
The Paris agreement aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial revolution levels, and to continue efforts to limit this rise to 1.5 degrees.
The current political momentum is in the direction of greater environmental ambition, at a time when the consequences of climate change are becoming more and more visible.
A recent study claims that 480,000 people have already died this century due to natural disasters linked to extreme weather events.