As I am sure many of you are aware of, President Biden has signed the letter to return to the Paris agreement. Now whether you think Biden isn’t your president or that he legitimately won is not in question here, he has the power and backing of the US government to be the man in charge. So what is the Paris agreement and how has Biden already started on his promises?
Let’s start with what the Paris agreement is for the younger readers that may not remember those times. In 2015, the United Nations met in Paris to discuss the current state of the climate and its decline. It was decided that each country would determine, plan and report on the way that they will reduce the carbon emissions. Now they specified that it must not impact on the production of food and that the countries must funnel money in a way that will encourage low greenhouse gas emissions.
This may seem silly that there is no international agreement on what everyone will be doing, like be carbon net zero by 2030 (as an example, too short a time period to do that now but in 2015 that could have been feasible. The closest that came was the 20/20/20 target that would see the reduction of 20% of CO2, increase in renewable energy by 20%, and be 20% more efficient. With the massively growing population and booming fast paced industries that require non renewable materials, it gets harder and harder to hit those targets the longer we wait. Now the USA was a major contributor to making reductions and Obama made sure to set ambitious targets. And as many will know, Trump said screw all of that in favour of the fossil fuel business’.
The idea is that if the world works together on this, each individual only needs to do a little bit to help out. There is 7.675 billion people in the world which is double what it was 50 years ago when we landed on the moon. Since then, the USA has had hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and earthquakes. Now one of these things is not affected by the rise in greenhouse gasses, but does it really matter when the other 3 are all equally devastating to the country and its residents.
So earlier this week, Biden managed to officially re-join the Paris agreement. This means new targets need to be set, and they need to show very visible results for it not to just be a sham. This will have a very real effect on the soft power that the United States holds if they fail to show their commitment. President Biden has already made steps to show his commitment such as the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline permit, a giant new oil pipeline. It could have made a lot of money with the transport of oil but was stopped to show tangible proof that the USA is here and isn’t messing around. Biden has finally announced that 100% of electricity will be clean by 2035, so there is plenty to do in his next few years in charge.
Now some of you will be saying that all these rules will ruin some industries and make a lot of people lose their jobs. In fact the more we invest into the green campaign, the more jobs will be made. Closure of a coal power plant means that someone else now has to produce that energy, and make sure it is working, fix them, make more, ect. Yes it may require some education, but so does any new job. If I went from being an accountant, to being a tax consultant, I would have the basics but still need to find out a lot about the new role.
This was a bit of a longer piece and I have tried to keep it simple. Ask and questions and keep yourself safe.
-Nic