April 27, 2018

Is It Wishful Thinking to Expect the U.S. to Return to the Paris Climate Deal?

By: ​Neil Bhatiya

In his staunch defense of multilateralism delivered to the U.S. Congress earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his hope that the United States would not in fact leave the landmark Paris agreement on fighting climate change, as President Donald Trump has declared. Macron’s appeal to the need for active American leadership underscores only one of the obstacles to an effective global response to this urgent environmental threat.

Some of these challenges are inherent in the mechanics of a long and overdue transition to lower-carbon forms of energy. Others are due to political decisions made by global economic powers, especially the United States. But the urgency is there. According to the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, the planet can burn about 708 gigatons of carbon dioxide—or about 17 years at current trends—before it reaches a point where it has surpassed the threshold of a 2-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures that the Paris agreement is aiming to prevent.

Read the Full Article at World Politics Review

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