By Noel Bailey
Within hours of being Commander-in-Chief, President Biden signed an executive order for the U.S. to re-join the Paris Climate Agreement.
According to the United Nations Climate Agreement webpage, the Paris Agreement is a “legally binding international treaty on climate change.”
The long-term goals of the agreement are to lower greenhouse gas emissions with developmental strategies. It aims to keep global warming well below “2’C and preferably down to 1.5’C of pre-industrial levels,” according to the Royal Geographical Society.
Since the Paris agreement was put into effect in 2015, there has already been low-carbon solutions and new markets. There have been carbon neutrality targets set into place and zero-carbon solutions have become competitive across economic sectors representing 25% of emissions.
Biden planned to reduce 2005’s emission levels by 50% by the year 2030. This was formalized into an updated national contribution under the Paris Agreement.
The U.S. is known for being a top global polluter of greenhouse gases, and we have a very high level of plastic waste in our country. The U.S. is the second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) and is the number one emitter in the history of carbon.
CO2 is one of the major greenhouse gases that is responsible for trapping heat that leads to the “melting of ice caps, global warming, unpredictable weather, and severe flooding linked to rising sea levels,” as stated by the Royal Geographical Society.
According to the World Resources Institute, the Inflation Reduction Act, the most comprehensive climate legislative law the U.S. has ever seen, was put into place in August of 2022. Former President Biden invested hundreds of billions of dollars into this act to bring forth clean energy, electric vehicles and environmental justice.
Current President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris agreement, making us the first country to withdraw from the treaty.
This cut the Biden administration’s national contribution out of the agreement, while also looking to terminate the Inflation Reduction Act Biden put into place during his term.
Instead of helping the world change so it doesn’t keep getting destroyed by our actions, Trump decided to take the U.S. out of the agreement. He said, “[It] doesn’t reflect U.S. values and ‘steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interest of the American people.’” according to AP News.
As provided by AP News, Trump said, “The United States’ successful track record of advancing both economic and environmental objectives should be a model for other countries.”
He firmly believes that our country, one of the top contributors to climate change, should be used as a “model” for other countries, when in reality, the U.S. is laughed at by other countries around the world because of people like him.
One of Trump’s primary agendas during his 2024 campaign was to have energy independence and energy dominance. According to Climate Home News, the words “drill, baby, drill,” were repeated by Trump multiple times in promising to make America more energy independent.
Trump wants the U.S. to produce its own oil. Trump also wants the U.S. to make more oil and gas extraction on federal land despite the restrictions that are in place right now.
The U.S. already doesn’t listen to these federal restrictions, and they have been broken for years. According to Leaf by Greenly Earth, the more we add now is going to “harm our air quality surrounding ecosystems, increase global temperatures and spur more frequent and intense natural disasters.”
The new oil and drilling projects Trump wants to pass are going to negatively contribute to climate change and global warming. The plans Trump has for the only Earth we have is to keep destroying it, and we should fear for our planet in the next four years of his term.