Premised on a heavy dose of international peer pressure, the final Paris Agreement reached last December includes a combination of both binding and non-binding provisions. The agreement is meant to shame countries into complying with self-proscribed greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. While the Obama administration continues to insist that this time around, the climate agreement really is historic, the reality is that the final Paris agreement will be no more significant to the United States than was the Kyoto Protocol.

Despite the administration’s best efforts, the Paris agreement has no means of enforcement, sustainability or legal significance without approval from the U.S. Senate. And so, with no democratic legitimacy, this agreement should not be viewed as the policy of the United States, but rather a perpetuation of the president’s climate legacy that Congress and the American people consistently reject. International representatives have been duly warned that promises made through sole-executive agreements only last as long as the president who made them.