Kemi Osukoya
January 27, 2021
As part of the United States efforts to combat climate change crisis and lower global carbon emissions, both domestic and foreign, President Joseph R. Biden announced his administration plans to make climate crisis a focal point of U.S. foreign policy agenda and national security discussions.
The announcement on Wednesday comes as no surprise. On his first day in office, shortly after being sworn in as new President of the United States, President Biden signed Executive Order reinstating the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Agreement, a global climate accord established in 2015 by nearly 200 signatory countries that he helped galvanize as vice president in the Obama-Biden administration.
The U.S. left the landmark agreement in November of last year, two years after former President Donald J. Trump announced that he would withdraw the country from the climate treaty and spent his presidency weakening U.S. environmental policies
President Biden’s latest action sends a strong message to the global community that the U.S. is ready again to take the lead on Climate change initiatives. Under the climate treaty, the U.S. pledged to lower its emissions by 25 percent by 2025 and it’s only on track to achieve about 17 percent of that decrease.
From the swaths of fire in California‘s forest to the flood in Mozambique and the heat in the Sahel that have upended the lives of thousands of people, climate crisis poses major risks to both the public and private sectors, and is the interloper that no one wants to party with and everyone is trying to get rid off .
According to the World Meteorological Organization, last year was one of the three warmest on record since 2015, and the last decade being the warmest decade on record in a persistent long-term climate change trend. The warmest six years have all been since 2015, with 2016, 2019 and 2020 being the top three.
Experts say President Biden’s latest Executive action, which elevates the U.S.’s Climate change global commitments, will significantly help advance global ambition for climate mitigation and adaptations. At home, it would spur green economy and jobs.
