The Paris Agreement could not take effect until at least 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of global emissions had formally joined. The country formally joined the agreement in September 2016 after submitting its proposal for participation. The United States has a number of tools already on the books, under laws already passed by Congress, to cut carbon pollution. President Obama was able to formally enter the United States into the agreement under international law through executive authority, since it imposed no new legal obligations on the country. Hammered out over two weeks in Paris during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) and adopted on December 12, 2015, the Paris Agreement marked a historic turning point for global climate action, as world leaders came to a consensus on an accord comprised of commitments by 195 nations to combat climate change and adapt to its impacts. Presidencia de la Republica Mexicana via Flickr History of the Paris Agreement Here’s a look at what the Paris Agreement does, how it works, and why it’s so critical to our future. Meanwhile, city, state, business, and civic leaders across the country and around the world have been ramping up efforts to drive the clean energy advances needed to meet the goals of the agreement and put the brakes on dangerous climate change.

Fortunately, American voters also got their say in November 2020, ousting Trump and sending Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.įollowing President Biden’s day one executive order, the United States officially rejoined the landmark Paris Agreement on February 19, 2021, positioning the country to once again be part of the global climate solution. “A world that is safer and more secure, more prosperous, and more free.” In December 2015, that was the world then-president Barack Obama envisioned we would leave today’s children when he announced that the United States, along with nearly 200 other countries, had committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, an ambitious global action plan to fight climate change.īut less than two years later, then-president Donald Trump put that future in jeopardy by announcing his plan to withdraw the United States from the accord-a step that became official on November 4, 2020-as part of a larger effort to dismantle decades of U.S. International Agreements on Climate Change.

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