President Donald Trump announced that America will pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Trump announced this shortly after being sworn in on Monday.
This marks the second time Trump has pulled out of this climate agreement.
In June 2017, Trump left the agreement in his first administration.
“So we’re getting out,” Trump said in 2017, according to Fox News. “The Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.”
“The Paris accord will undermine our economy,” he added. “It’s time to exit.”.
Almost 200 countries adopted the Paris Climate Agreement in December 2015.
This agreement says it is a “legally binding international treaty on climate change.”
The United Nations says the agreement’s goal is “[i]ts overarching goal is to hold ‘the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ and pursue efforts ‘to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.’”
The Paris Climate Agreement does not have an enforcement mechanism.
After Trump removed America from the agreement, former President Joe Biden reinstated the country back into it four years ago on the first day of his presidential administration.
According to WorldoMeter, China is the world’s biggest producer of C02 emissions. The communist country represents almost 33 percent of the world’s C02 emissions.
America is the second-largest emitter, contributing nearly 13 percent of global C02 emissions. India takes third place with 7 percent, while Russia ranks fourth with 5 percent.
Gina McCarthy, a former Biden administration climate adviser, said that with the Trump administration leaving the agreement, it has “abdicated its responsibility to protect the American people and our national security.”
“Our states, cities, businesses, and local institutions stand ready to pick up the baton of U.S. climate leadership and do all they can — despite federal complacency — to continue the shift to a clean energy economy,” she told The Hill. “Day-in and day-out state and local efforts will be focused on delivering good-paying jobs, lowering energy bills, cutting pollution, and protecting our health.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
Photo “Paris Climate Agreement” by United Nations Photo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
