Rejoining Paris was easy. Here's where the climate fight gets awkward.
The U.S. got cheers as it rejoined the Paris Agreement Friday, a long-expected move under President Joe Biden that the administration nonetheless packed with all the pomp and circumstance the Zoom-era can muster.
But after the (virtual) confetti falls, the real work begins — and the world has few clear answers for tackling runaway climate change, much as when nations banded together to sign Paris in 2015.
The coronavirus pandemic brought a brief respite on the carbon front last year, as the global shutdown in transportation and other economic activity resulted in a significant but temporary decline in greenhouse gas output — perhaps even a slowdown in future growth. But the world is still on track to exceed the temperature threshold that scientists warn would cement the most disastrous consequences effects of climate change. And the U.S. under former President Donald Trump backslid in terms of international climate leadership, essentially standing still on carbon emissions when the world drastically needed to ramp up its climate-fighting efforts.
Friday's ceremony reverses Trump's most symbolic climate action, which made the U.S. the only country in the world to pull itself out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Biden's supporters hope the return to the Paris pact is still enough to help restore the United States' leadership role, even as he takes on the domestic economic transformation and diplomatic fights that climate progress will require.
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