What Biden’s Presidency Means for the Paris Climate Agreement

Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement on global warming on Nov. 4. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, wants back in. But averting the worst effects of climate change will be an uphill battle even with the involvement of the U.S., the second-largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions, behind China. Global warming already is fueling wildfires, hurricanes and mass migrations, and in the U.S., Trump dismantled regulations meant to stifle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.

The landmark 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.