President Joe Biden did something fascinating on his first day at the major climate summit taking place in Scotland: He apologized.
“I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States, in the last administration, pulled out of the Paris [Agreement] and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” Biden told his fellow world leaders Monday during the United Nations summit, known as COP26.
Despite the U.S. being the leading contributor to climate change for most of the last century, America’s commitment to reversing that trend has been all over the map. The whiplash between Democratic and Republican administrations has been intense, leaving Biden in the unfortunate position of convincing the world that it’s OK to trust us again. Unfortunately, given our track record, I’m not surprised that the response on some of the thorniest issues has been a devastating side-eye.
Despite the U.S. being the leading contributor to climate change for most of the last century, America’s commitment to reversing that trend has been all over the map.
The Paris Agreement that Biden referenced was the end result of the 2015 climate summit, known as COP21. The binding treaty committed countries to keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to preindustrial levels, to reach a “climate neutral world” by 2050. When I recently asked climate experts on Twitter which of the previous annual climate meetings was the most successful, “Paris” was the resounding answer.
Paris was a major achievement — one that former President Donald Trump abandoned within his first six months in office. His reasoning, such as it was, was that the treaty “put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, in a very, very big economic disadvantage.” While the words were particularly Trumpian, it’s a sentiment climate change deniers and fossil fuel companies had been making for decades.
For once, Trump was following political precedence: President George W. Bush had done something similar in 2001 when he refused to support ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. That treaty would have seen the U.S. reduce its emission of greenhouse gases down to 7 percent below 1990 levels. Instead, the U.S. output of greenhouse gases continued to increase steadily until 2008. As of 2019, the U.S. was, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, still emitting 1.8 percent more greenhouse gases than in 1990.
Though Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement didn’t become effective until November 2020, it still signaled to the world (yet again) that the United States isn’t exactly a reliable partner on addressing climate change. Biden reversed that decision with an executive order on his first day in office, and the U.S. officially rejoined the climate treaty in February. But that doesn’t erase what’s occurred, nor does it change the fact that the U.S. isn’t poised to do that much better in the near future.
Everyone in Glasgow knows that no matter how sincere Biden’s promises are, it’s up to Congress to enact them. Yes, there are substantial investments in preventing and mitigating climate change inside the Build Back Better Act that Democrats have been preparing. The latest climate package includes $555 billion to “make it easier to buy electric vehicles, install solar panels, retrofit buildings and manufacture wind turbines and other clean-energy equipment,” as The Washington Post reported.








