The Paris Agreement - How does it work? Evolving since the 90s

The United States is back in the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Accord (or Paris Agreement) was designed to keep our planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Almost all countries joined the agreement after the 2015 meeting in Paris, where leaders laid down each country’s framework to end the use of fossil fuels and have clean energy.

Each country had a different plan and goal. For the U.S., the world’s second most pollution emitting country, the plan was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below its 2005 level by 2025.

A new normal for west drought: From persistent to perpetual The policies that have been in place in the U.S. since 2005 was on track to reduce emissions in the range of 17 percent below the 2005 level by 2020. This meant that to achieve the 2025 target laid out in the Paris Accord, between 9 and 11% further reductions had to be achieved.

Several U.S. laws were put in place, combined with existing and proposed regulations, including the Clean Air, Energy Policy, and the Energy and Security Act would help this goal as stated in the agreement in 2015. Countries would also strengthen the commitments over time.

Greenhouse gases are pollutants, that not only get trapped in the atmosphere, warming the temperature of our planet, causing climate changes and more extreme weather events, but pollutants also threaten our healthy and entire ecosystem.

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Putting new laws in place and changing ways to reduce greenhouse gases, would require an investment from every country. It’s an investment because money spent to secure clean energy, would not only reduce the greenhouse gasses that put our health at risk but also produces more jobs.

In fact, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the renewable sector employed more than 3 million Americans. That is 14 times the number of coal gas, oil, and other fossil fuel industry workers. Additionally, renewables continue to grow exponentially, creating more jobs over the years as “coal jobs” will continue to decrease as clean demand increases and its prices decrease.

It might surprise many that climate change has been in international talks for decades. In 1992, there were several countries that adopted environmental agreements at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. This is actually where the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was born.

During this summit, there were not set goals to limit greenhouse gases, but countries laid the groundwork for future agreements, protocols, and international negotiations that would later be discussed and assessed at the Conference of the Parties, or COP.

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In 1997, in the COP 3 in Japan, the Kyoto Protocol became the first legally mandated agreement where countries had specific goals to reduce emissions. This agreement would not go into effect until 2005, and the targets were established for the top greenhouse gas emitting countries because they (we) were responsible for the most pollutants. Although the U.S. joined, it never ratified it, as China and India, the first and third world’s polluters, were not included in the plan. The Kyoto Protocol was extended through 2012 to allow time to produce a new way of having every country involved to combat climate change by protecting our planet.

In 2011 at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa there was a new treaty created to include all nations and establish goals to work together, fairly. This new treaty would later officially become the Paris Agreement, coming into effect in November 2016.

The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on January 20, 2021, enabling the rebuilding of diplomatic and regulatory alliances to meet emissions-reducing goals.

If the world’s temperature increases more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from industrial levels, it would result in major extinctions, more extreme weather, such as drought, heavier storms (snow or rain), and rising sea levels, which would pose a great risk not only to coastal residents but to inland areas, where these residents would have to move to, also increasing other demands, such as for health, food, and overall well-being.

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