No matter the result of the presidential election, one thing will be immediately clear: The United States will no longer be a part of the Paris climate change agreement.
President Trump rejected the global climate pact, negotiated in the Obama administration, during a Rose Garden ceremony in June 2017. But he can’t officially leave it until Nov. 4, the day after the election.
That’s the one-year anniversary of Trump’s State Department submitting paperwork to the United Nations notifying of its intent to withdraw, setting in motion a 12-month waiting period to get out officially as required under the Paris deal’s terms.
Despite those logistics, the ultimate fate of the U.S. relationship with the Paris pact hinges on the outcome of the election.
If he were to win, Joe Biden has pledged to reenter the agreement on day one of his presidency, Jan. 20, a move that would make the lame-duck period during which the U.S. will be absent from the pact a forgotten footnote.
“If Biden wins, the gap is kind of meaningless because people will know the U.S. is right back in and will treat the Trump years like a bad memory,” said Alden Meyer, U.S. manager of the International Climate Politics Hub.
Trump is unlikely to reengage with the Paris agreement, or prioritize mitigating climate change more broadly, if he were to win a second term. Trump has complained the Obama administration’s ambition to cut emissions was too much compared to other major polluters such as China and India. Under the Paris agreement, all of the nations of the world set their own nonbinding targets for reducing carbon emissions.
“There’s not going to be a reversal of that decision. I can’t imagine the president changing his mind on Paris by himself,” said George David Banks, Trump’s former international energy adviser, who had recommended the president stay in the Paris agreement while submitting a less aggressive emissions-cutting target.
Meyer said Trump could even look to undermine global climate efforts, seeking to convince like-minded countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, or Brazil to reject the Paris agreement also.
“The unanswered question is, will he try to form a coalition of the unwilling to try to and block climate action?” Meyer said.
Biden would have a huge gap to close
If Biden wins and immediately announces his intent to rejoin Paris, he would need to wait another 30 days for the U.S. to officially be back in it.
The wait between Trump’s initial rejection of the agreement to Biden rejoining would prove to be consequential.
The U.S. remains far away from reaching its Paris target, set by the Obama administration in 2015, of reducing emissions 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.
“Everyone knows we are unlikely to meet that because of what Trump has done over the last four years,” said Meyer, who noted the administration’s weakening of emissions regulations and promotion of fossil fuel development.
While market forces, businesses, and state and city governments have united to pick up the slack, it hasn’t been enough without the Trump administration’s involvement.
And despite a huge drop in emissions this year because of the pandemic, which drove the economy and travel to a standstill, that “falls far short of the scale of reductions needed to put the U.S. on track for deep decarbonization,” according to analysis in July by the research firm Rhodium Group.
The U.S., the world’s largest economy and second-biggest emitter, has watched as other competitor countries have raised their targets for lowering emissions.
The European Union recently committed, by law, to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and it is looking to cut emissions by 55% by 2030.
China, the world’s largest emitter, last month pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, meaning it would balance emissions with measures that take pollution out of the atmosphere.
Japan, the globe’s fifth-leading emitter, said this week it would be carbon-neutral by 2050.
Meanwhile, China and Europe are flirting with imposing import tariffs on emissions-intensive goods, which could threaten the U.S. trade position.
“The United States has been weakened by the Trump withdrawal,” said David Sandalow, a former under secretary of energy in the Obama administration. “The U.S. reputation abroad has suffered enormously.”
How Biden could strengthen US commitment
Biden is eager to change that, promising in his first 100 days to “convene a climate world summit” of the largest emitting nations “to persuade them to join the United States in making more ambitious national pledges” above commitments they have already made.
When the U.S. withdraws from the agreement under Trump, the Obama administration’s previous commitment for cutting emissions out to 2025 becomes moot.
Analysts instead expect Biden to submit an updated target on reducing emissions out to 2030 ahead of the next U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom, in November 2021.
“The bar for the Biden administration is making an ambitious and credible 2030 target,” said Nat Keohane, senior vice president for international climate at the Environmental Defense Fund. “I don’t think they need to revisit 2025.”
Keohane, a former special assistant to Obama, said Biden would have to commit, at the minimum, to something in the range of cutting U.S. emissions 45 to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030, in order to help the world meet global climate targets.
Researchers with BloombergNEF projected Tuesday that the world must slash emissions by 6% each year out to 2050 to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius and by 10% each year to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the main goals of the Paris agreement.
Biden is also likely to fulfill U.S. contributions to the Green Climate Fund, a pot of money that Trump stopped contributing to designed to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
Biden, however, would need help from Congress to achieve whatever emissions-cutting target he sets. The Democratic nominee has said he wants the U.S. to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and produce carbon-free electricity by 2035. But those outcomes would eventually require new laws, such as clean energy mandates or carbon pricing, along with, in the near term, significant investments in clean energy in potential pandemic-related stimulus legislation after the election.
“It will be very clear to people in the administration that to make their target credible, there needs to be a real commitment to pass legislation in Congress,” Keohane said.
