In 2016, Trump campaigned on a promise to “denounce” the deal, which unfairly weighed on his choice over the United States and gave a passport to poor countries. The United States, second only to China in terms of THE level of pollution of CHARBON, has committed to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. To combat climate change and its negative effects, 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement at COP21 on 12 December 2015 in Paris. The agreement, which came into force less than a year later, aims to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius this century, while continuing to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees. On the other side of the debate are the head of the environmental protection agency, Scott Pruitt, a virulent anti-climate extremist, and chief strategist Steve Bannon, widely known for shaping the president`s nationalist views and fueling his distrust of international agreements. Another key difference between the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol is its scope. While the Kyoto Protocol distinguishes between Schedule 1 countries and those not annexed to Schedule 1, this branch is scrambled in the Paris Agreement, as all parties must submit emission reduction plans. [34] While the Paris Agreement continues to emphasize the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities” – the recognition that different nations have different capacities and duties to combat climate change – it does not offer a specific separation between developed and developing countries. [34] It therefore appears that negotiators will have to continue to address this issue in future rounds of negotiations, although the debate on differentiation could take on a new dynamic.
Finally, instead of giving China and India a passport to pollution, as Trump asserts, the pact is the first time these two major developing countries have agreed on concrete and ambitious climate commitments. The two countries, which are already poised to be world leaders in renewable energy, have made considerable progress in achieving their Paris goals. And since Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the agreement, the Chinese and Indian leaders have reaffirmed their commitment and continued to implement domestic policies to achieve their goals. The Paris Agreement provides a sustainable framework that guides global efforts for decades to come. The aim is to increase countries` climate ambitions over time. To achieve this, the agreement provides for two review processes, each in a five-year cycle. A preliminary inventory-impact study was published in Nature Communications in April 2020. Based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, the authors showed that the implementation of current strategies by 2030 leaves an average emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq, with optimal means to achieve targets well below 2 degrees Celsius and 1.5 degrees Celsius.
If national contributions were fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by one-third. The countries assessed did not achieve their promised contributions with implemented measures (implementation deficit) or experienced a gap in ambition with optimal paths to well below 2oC. The study showed that all countries should accelerate the implementation of renewable technology strategies, while improving efficiency in emerging and fossil fuel-dependent countries is particularly important. [31] The EU and its member states are individually responsible for ratifying the Paris Agreement.