Five years ago, the United States pushed the rest of the world to sign the Paris Climate Agreement, the groundbreaking global agreement reached in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in an effort to slow climate change, and that was one year before Barack Obama's presidency ended.

In the first days of his rule, former President Donald Trump fulfilled his electoral promise in January 2017, and his country withdrew from the agreement to become the only country to withdraw from the treaty so far.

On his first day as president, Joe Biden officially began returning and joining the "Paris Climate Agreement" within 30 days, as Washington will return fully from February 19 next.

Biden's nomination of former Secretary of State John Kerry to manage the climate change file reflected the importance and priority of this file for the new US administration.

Kerry pledged to work towards zero emissions, and emphasized that "failure is simply not an option."

The majority of countries in the world joined the Paris Agreement, and among the 195 countries that signed the agreement, 189 countries officially adopted the agreement.

Biden signs executive orders in his White House office (French)

Trump's logic to withdraw

Former President Trump considered that the terms of the agreement stand as an obstacle to the growth of the US economy, and indicated his rejection of "anything that could stand in the way of the growth of the American economy, and that it is time to give the American states priority over Paris and France."

Trump believed that the agreement harms the US energy sector, job opportunities and American jobs, and therefore his country will not abide by "the severe financial and economic restrictions that the agreement imposes on our country."

He added during his speech when announcing his country's withdrawal from the treaty, that the Paris Agreement "does not work in the interest of the United States, and that the current agreement is not firm enough with China and India."

It should be noted that the United States is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions now, after China.

Morgan Basilian, a professor of public policy at the University of Colorado College, believes that in the short term, the benefits of Washington will be primarily diplomatic, as it is not easy to try to rebuild the international standing of a country that helped bring the world into the Paris Agreement and then abruptly abandoned it.

The Biden foreign policy team includes former Secretary of State John Kerry in charge of the (French) climate file.

Return to the agreement and try to return to leadership

In his first speech as a presidential climate envoy, Kerry stressed the need to accelerate the pace of global decarbonization, and said the United States "will move forward with a mixture of humility and ambition."

"Reaching the complete elimination of global carbon emissions early in 2050 will represent a comprehensive transformation in the global economy," Kerry said.

Kerry acknowledged that "the new administration feels the pain and embarrassment resulting from Donald Trump's reckless decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement," noting that moving to alternative energy sources (referred to as the Green Deal) would "create millions of jobs, and that the world is facing an unprecedented opportunity to create Wealth. "

Returning to "Paris Climate" was one of Biden's main pledges in his climate plan, along with promises to eliminate carbon emissions and bring them to zero "no later than" in 2050, and to eliminate unclean energy generation in the United States by 2035. .

Experts believe that this step is only the beginning of a long journey to reform climate policies in the United States.

Washington has pledged to play an important role in the upcoming summit organized by the United Nations on climate in Glasgow, Scotland, next November, known as "Cup 26" (COP26), in which the US President is expected to participate.

What does this return mean?

The negotiation of the Paris Agreement took many years, and each country defined its own goals and determined how it could achieve these goals according to its priorities.

After 4 years of inaction on the climate issue, the United States has a lot to do to catch up.

"The easy part is to rejoin the Paris Agreement, and the next step is to come up with an ambitious working outlook for developing national capabilities into 2030," says Alden Meyer, a senior partner at the E3G Climate and Environment Research Center.

Meyer adds that the US administration "is unfortunately in a situation of having to backtrack on a lot of things before it can make progress," referring to the policies of the previous administration.

During the past four years, geopolitics has witnessed a major shift in driving the global agenda on climate issues, with China in particular assuming a more prominent role after pledging in 2020 to be carbon neutral by 2060.

Relations between the United States and China have been strained during Trump's presidency.

For his part, the new president promised Biden to be strict with China, which could negatively affect the chances of success of their joint efforts on climate issues.

"COB 26 Champions" Climate Strategy Director Jennifer Austin believes that climate negotiations can be "one of the pillars of re-establishing a better relationship" between the United States and China.

Natalie Mahwald, a climate scientist at Cornell University and lead author of the 2018 United Nations Report on Climate Change, considers that the United States is one of the largest economies in the world and has contributed the most to climate change, and it is hugely important to return to the Paris Agreement. To start a new chapter of cooperation on these issues. "