The United States’ second exit from the Paris Agreement wasn’t unexpected. Even before he was reelected, now-president Donald Trump had promised for months that he would pull the country out of the United Nations pact to limit global warming: the Paris climate “rip-off,” as he called it.
Still, the sound of Trump’s black Sharpie scratching across the signature line of an executive order — “Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements” — seemed to reverberate around the world this week, as climate experts, diplomats, and concerned laypeople watched the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases turn its back on the accord.
The 2015 Paris Agreement is a treaty signed by 196 countries that agrees to limit global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and, ideally, cap temperature increases at 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Almost every year since then, countries have gathered annually to hash out the accord’s particularities and — in theory, at least — reach further consensus on how to addres... Read more
