The U.S. will leave the Paris climate accord on Nov. 4. But voters will decide for how long.

[Judi Lynn]

Under Trump, the United States will be the only country to drop out of the international agreement to cut pollution linked to climate change. If he wins the White House, Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the accord.

By
Steven Mufson and
Brady Dennis
Oct. 30, 2020 at 9:41 a.m. CDT

Another important date looms on the calendar this coming week in addition to a national election billed as the most pivotal in decades. On Wednesday, the United States is set to become the only nation to officially withdraw from an international pact aimed at slowing climate change.

The exit of the world’s largest economy — and the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China — comes three years to the day after President Trump began the drawn-out legal process of withdrawing the nation from the 2015 Paris climate accord.

But whether the U.S. exit turns out to be brief or lasting depends on the outcome of the presidential contest. A second Trump term would make clear that an international effort to slow the Earth’s warming will not include the U.S. government. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, meanwhile, has vowed to rejoin the Paris accord as soon as he is inaugurated, and to make the United States a global leader on climate action.

For observers overseas, much as for voters in the United States, the differences could hardly be more stark, the stakes hardly higher.
“For us, it could be a matter of survival,” said Carlos Fuller, the lead negotiator for Alliance of Small Island States, a group of 44 islands and low-lying coastal states around the world that act as a bloc at international climate talks.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/30/us-paris-climate-agreement-trump-biden/

[patricia92243]

1. If it took three years for us to get out of it, I wonder how quickly

Joe would be able to get us back in.

[Duppers]

2. Good question. Immediately, we can hope. nt