Despite witnessing record hot weather in 2024, wildfires in Los Angeles, devastating hurricanes from Florida to North Carolina, and harsh climatic conditions — mainly, droughts, storms, heat waves, flooding, and rising sea levels — across the US, the sweeping executive orders of United States has once again withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA).
It has already produced havoc in international economies and industries, uncertainties in global societies, and disappointments in diplomatic engagements. Withdrawing from the PCA has also badly impacted universal ecologies and climates.
Thus, it is a self-damaging, self-destructive, and self-defeating policy option that will have serious socioeconomic repercussions for the US economy, productive channels, and society alike.
The US withdrawal from the PCA is indeed a wake-up call for the world’s countries, communities, and regulatory bodies confronting the increasing ratios of climate change historically produced by the so-called advanced economies and industrialist Western countries. Thus, a collective global governance is the need of the hour.
The US withdrawal from the PCA has delivered a significant blow to global climate action, opening the door to reduced regulations across the US, which could have far-reaching effects on worldwide climate efforts in 2025 and beyond.
The PCA, which has been a driving force and global consensus for countries jointly fighting against climate change, has now lost the US, one of the pioneer signatories and the world's largest polluter, in historical terms.
Washington had announced the same in 2016, but there was an extended notice process, meaning it did not take effect until almost 2020.
Unfortunately, the PCA’s desired goals were further marginalized in 2015 when countries around the world agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions that limited global warming and forestalled the worst impacts of climate change.
In real terms, financial assessments of the White House about the PCA are false and manipulated and are not imposing unfair burdens on the US economy. Thus, it is political hype, pledging weak commitment and little sense of responsibility for a noble global cause vital for the overall health of the planet, purification of the environment, and ecological balance.
On the other hand, China is striving hard to control the ratios of climate change through rigorous green technologies in its own country and facilitating the green transformation among Belt and Road Initiative member countries through investments, economic cooperation, and further consolidating the same under the Green Silk Route Initiative.
Thus, China has remained the real champion of renewables globally and has proven itself more resilient and productive than any other single country's green politics and policies.
Principally, under the PCA, every country in the world agreed to a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, unfortunately, this has not been achieved, and the US withdrawal will further delay it.
It will also hit former president Joe Biden’s greenhouse gas emissions target of 60 percent from peak levels by 2035, a goal that would likely require a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
It is analyzed that leaving the PCA would damage the US national narrative and drive to defeat climate change through clean energy systems and green markets. Thus, it would badly hurt some of broader economic goals for the US.
Additionally, Washington’s hostile policies about many renewable energy initiatives — mainly the promotion of electric and green fuel transition — would be a disaster for the US’s green dreams and development, and terminal to many environmental regulations.
Moreover, the White House’s executive orders aiming at boosting fossil fuels and undoing Biden-era initiatives to limit greenhouse gas emissions would have multiplier socioeconomic effects in the days to come.
United Nations agencies termed US withdrawing from the PCA “dangerous” for limiting its efforts of curbing global warming.
The comparative study of US climate history reveals that it has sustained 403 weather and climate disasters since 1980 — with overall damages/costs reaching $2.915 trillion.
However, leaving the PCA is an unwise, untimely, and unproductive decision, which would create colossal losses to its state, society, and system in the days to come.
In summary, the PCA is alive, integrated, and innovative, disseminating a renewable “energy revolution” offering opportunities for jobs and prosperity around the globe.
Hopefully, despite the US leaving the PCA, the international community will continue to uphold its holistic and comprehensive vision and leadership by working jointly for low-carbon, resilient economic growth and creating quality jobs and markets for 21st-century prosperity.
The PCA demands that countries implement their plans — and pressures them to increase the scope of their efforts every five years.
It is feared that after the US withdrawal, there could be a reduction in voluntary contributions, and the world would face an increased emissions scenario — one study showed that US greenhouse gas emissions could be at least three percent higher by 2030 without the PCA.
To conclude, the Chinese vision of green geo-economics leading the PCA is the way forward in protecting the world from severe heat, harsh weather, deadly diseases, disasters, and deterioration of environments, ecologies, seas, and oceans.
US policymakers should think twice to avoid its international responsibilities towards common assets like humanity, air, weather, water, health, shelter, education, and — last but not least — climate change.
The author is president of the Center of Pak-China Corridor of Knowledge and executive director of the Center for South Asia & International Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
