What U.S. Exit Means for Paris Climate Change Accord

Like the wedding reception of a runaway bride, the Paris Agreement on global warming is free to go on, just minus a pretty important player. Even with the involvement of the U.S., the biggest carbon producer in history, the goal of the accord was going to be a challenge. And now President Donald Trump has started a lengthy process to pull the U.S. out of the agreement.

The 2015 accord among almost 200 countries brought together the developed and developing worlds to pledge limits on the fossil-fuel pollution that causes climate change. Those pledges are voluntary and non-binding. The goal is to hold the rise in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (compared with preindustrial levels), and preferably to 1.5 degree, at the end of this century, to avoid the rising seas and superstorms that climate models predict.