The United States' return to the Paris Climate Agreement is pivotal in the global fight against climate change, but US President Joe Biden's upcoming climate summit during which he will announce Washington's climate pledge is still insufficient, Executive Director of the US-based think tank EcoEquity, Tom Athanasiou, told Sputnik
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th April, 2021) The United States' return to the Paris Climate Agreement is pivotal in the global fight against climate change, but US President Joe Biden's upcoming climate summit during which he will announce Washington's climate pledge is still insufficient, Executive Director of the US-based think tank EcoEquity, Tom Athanasiou, told Sputnik.
President Biden has invited more than 40 countries to participate in a virtual climate change summit on Thursday and Friday that symbolically overlaps with Earth Day. Biden is expected to announce the United States' new climate pledge after gaining re-admittance to the Paris Climate Agreement in February.
"His infrastructure plans would be a big deal if he is able to put them into practice. So too his new climate pledge, though we don't quite know the details yet. They will be made public, it seems, on the 22nd. Here I should be clear. The pledge will simultaneously be a major shift from Trump-era policy and entirely inadequate to the climate challenge," Athanasiou, whose think tank is also a member of the US Climate Action Network, said.
The infrastructure plans proposed by Biden include initiatives that help combat climate change, such as installing more than 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations around the United States by 2030 in an attempt to boost the electric vehicle market.
While Athanasiou said he believes such initiatives and holding the summit are good, he also pointed out that they must not overshadow the UN-brokered COP climate negotiations.
"Given the need to pivot back to a real climate policy after the Trump years, it seems a good move. What is essential is that it not in any way take the place of the UN climate negotiations, which have to remain the core of international climate policymaking," Athanasiou said.
Changes in the US political leadership are very consequential in the global fight against climate change, Athanasiou added.
"The change will be even greater if Democrats are able to hold power. As you know, the US is not monolithic, and its future is unclear... The United States is very divided politically, and the right-wing is very strongly aligned with the fossil fuel industry," he added.
Athanasiou went on to say that while US participation in the Paris climate accords made its targets achievable, a concerted global effort was necessary to reverse the dire situation.
"[The US's return to the Paris Agreement] means that the goals of the Paris Agreement are achievable. But the science is grim... the Paris Agreement can still be made to work. However, all the major nations including both the US and Russia will have to do their fair share in the shared global effort for this to be possible," Athanasiou said.
The Paris Agreement, made within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015, has a long-term goal of limiting the global rise in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius. The Trump administration announced that it would withdraw the US, one of the major players, from the agreement in 2017, but had to wait until 2019 to formally do so. On his first day in the White House, President Joe Biden announced that the US would be rejoining the agreement, officially gaining readmission in February of 2021.
