The Climate Action Now Act & The Paris Agreement

The Climate Action Now Act & The Paris Agreement

Tatiana Eaves

The Climate Action Now Act was introduced in the House on March 27 as bill number H.R. 9, by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL14). H.R. 9 is legislation that directs the president to develop a plan for the United States to meet its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement. It requires the U.S to remain in the Paris Agreement beyond 2020 by preventing the administration from using any federal dollars to withdraw from the agreement.

In September 2016, during his closing months as president, Obama formally entered the Paris agreement. With that he also committed the United States to reducing its emissions by 26% below its 2005 levels by 2025. The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that deals with the greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance signed in 2016. The language of this agreement was negotiated by representatives of all major emitting countries (196 state parties) at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris, France. The only significant emitters that have not signed on are Syria and Nicaragua.

The long-term goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep the increase in the global average temperature well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C, in efforts to substantially reduce the risks and impacts associated with climate change. It also aims to increase the ability of parties to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and make "finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development". Under the Paris Agreement, each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate global warming.

The U.S. is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Since Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, a wave of states, cities, and corporations have stepped up and made ambitious commitments to reduce climate-damaging pollution. For example, Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam announced that the state will be joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), a group of northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that work together to reduce pollution from the transportation sector—which, in Virginia, is the largest source of greenhouse gases. California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two bills that help provide a roadmap for addressing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings—which represent a quarter of California’s emissions—produced by burning fossil fuels onsite for heat and hot water.

Public concern about our climate crisis has also risen across generational, geographic, and partisan lines. The shift in public opinion is fueled in part by extreme storms, record heat, and dire scientific reports emphasizing the urgency to act. The Climate Action Now bill is a result of these public shifts in opinions and concerns. This bill will achieve its goals of limiting greenhouse gases and promoting green jobs due to the specific deadlines it sets on the President to report his climate plans. “H.R. 9 requires the President to develop and update annually a plan for the United States to meet its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement on climate change. The bill outlines what must be included in the plan, including descriptions of steps to (1) cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and (2) confirm that other parties to the agreement with major economies are fulfilling their announced contributions. The President must seek and publish comments from the public when submitting and updating the plan”.

It also requires that within six months, the President must report on the effect of the Paris Agreement on clean energy job development in rural communities and contract with the National Academy of Sciences to report on the potential impacts of a withdrawal by the United States from the agreement on the global economic competitiveness of the U.S. economy and on U.S. workers.

This bill marks the first congressional vote in a decade to address the threats of climate change. This is monumental and representative of the change our society is facing in reference to public opinion on climate change. However, as this bill has passed the House it is unlikely to pass the Senate or even come to a vote. The reasons being that it is a Republican majority and President Trump wishes to pull out of the Paris Agreement altogether. I wonder if this policy is too ambitious to pass the Senate at this time and know that there is potential for this bill to be bipartisan. In the House, it was seen as a democratic bill as most supporters were democrats and there were only three republican signatures.

Many opponents counter that the Paris Agreement is economically costly and burdens the U.S. to international norms instead of self-directing its own energy future; that the Paris agreement will cause Americans to lose jobs in the energy sector and that taxpayer money is wasted due to the proposed Green Climate Fund that would collect $100 billion per year by 2020. The goal of this fund would be to subsidize green energy and pay for other climate adaptation and mitigation programs in poorer nations. I personally do not agree with these claims as green energy is highly profitable and brings in millions of jobs and I believe it is our duty as a major industrial country to pay for green innovation in poorer nations.

The climate crisis is catching up with us. Climate change is expected to lower our economy by increasing the losses of American infrastructure, increasing export/import prices for fish, and negatively effecting the tourism industry.  The IPCC report states that extreme weather in the last 3 years has cost our country $400 billion in damage and the climate is already changing faster than previous models predicted. That means on our current path this number is expected to keep growing year after year. By 2020 it is expected that coastal damages will cost $120 billion. For example, the frequency at which regularly dry areas in Miami have become substantially flooded occurred 5-10 times per year in previous years, which was easily manageable by the city. Now the flooding has reached a frequency of 30-40 times per year due to overall sea level rise. That has increasingly negative effects on tourism and revenue overall.

I believe that staying in the Paris Agreement is the only way we will tackle these issues and reduce the detrimental impacts that climate change will have on people’s livelihoods and the economy. This was traditionally not a partisan concept. I am wondering how in today’s political climate we can make this a bipartisan bill. The main concept of this bill is to not pull out of the Paris Agreement. Therefore, I am unsure where the policy might be adjusted or improved. Potential lies in the timeline the president has in reporting the impacts of the Paris Agreement on the economy and laying out specific plans for lowering the emission rate of the country. It is also difficult to ensure that other major polluters like China are doing their part in the Paris Agreement. It is difficult to put money and effort into green infrastructure if other major polluters are not doing the same. Lastly, I wonder if the Paris agreement itself could be modified to hold all countries accountable more effectively and also obtain international support.

 

Resources

1.     Congress.gov (2019). H.R.9 - Climate Action Now Act

2.     EPA.gov (2014). Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data.  Retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Country

3.     IPCC (2014). Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change . Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J.C. Minx (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

4.     IPCC (2018). Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press.