United States: the American climate plan puts the Paris agreement back in motion – World
With a 370 billion dollar climate law, the United States joined Europe, years late, to set a climate example for other major polluting countries, welcoming experts, pointing out the limits of the American plan . The adoption on Sunday evening in the US Senate of President Joe Biden’s major climate law, which aims to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 2005, puts the States a little more States, the world’s largest emitter, on track for the Paris Agreement, from which his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew.
It comes to counterbalance the cold snap cast by China, the world’s second largest emitter, on Friday, when it announced the freezing of its cooperation with Washington on the climate, due to the Taiwanese crisis. The US package is particularly relevant for the European Union, which is in the process of finalizing the adoption of the “most ambitious climate policy in the world”, explains Michael Pahle, of the Institute for Research on the Impact of Climate Change in Potsdam. . Or “EU policy can only succeed – economically and politically – if major emitters and trading partners take similar steps,” he told AFP.
The American text should be definitively adopted by Congress this week. By also addressing concerns about fuel inflation, it demonstrates the possibility of climate legislation “by linking it to things that really matter to ordinary people”, notes Simon Lewis, of University College London. . “It is very important that the largest economy in the world invests in the climate with a package of measures aimed at creating jobs and a new, cleaner and greener economy,” Simon Lewis told AFP.
Promote clean technologies
The Rhodium Group think tank estimates that this “historic” legislation reduces historical American emissions by at least 31% by 2040, compared to 2005, or even by 44% if macroeconomic conditions are favorable, in particular by an accumulated inflation. fossil fuels and cheap renewables. According to Eric Beinhocker, of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at Oxford Martin School, the American law, which promotes the purchase of solar panels and the acquisition of electric ones, will lead to a “massive increase” in clean technologies and drive down the cost of renewable energy – with global consequences.
A failure of the plan, adopted after 18 months of difficult negotiations, would have been a “major setback for the viability of the Paris agreement”, according to Michael Pahle. The international climate agreement, signed in 2015, urges nations to limit global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels and if possible 1.5°C. The world is already at nearly 1.2°C.
Need for global action
Despite this overall satisfaction, the experts do not hide their face on the imperfections of the American plan. It includes a boost to gas pipelines, “a step backwards”, laments Michael Mann, a renowned American climatologist. “There are many limits”, also recognizes David Levaï, associate researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), “but it is still a historic compromise” after the “disillusions” since the arrival in power of Joe Biden in 2021.
“Some hoped that this project would be the coffin and the nails in the coffin of fossil fuels,” he told AFP. “In the end, there is no coffin or nails, but this law ultimately demonstrates that a culture of compromise has nevertheless made it possible to put the climate at the center of public policies and to pass an ambitious project,” he wants to remember. .
However, the American and European efforts, if they combine their merit to power with the rest of the world, will not be enough without the commitment of the other main emitters, in the first place China, India and Russia.
Only action on a global scale can achieve the emission reductions necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming, already “felt by all of us”, recalls for his part, Radhika Khosla, from the University of ‘Oxford.