Introduction
In December of 2015, the Paris Agreement was accepted as a global initiative toward the large climate change problem we are facing today. The Agreement is a climate change policy that’s main goals are to attempt to lower the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere and keep the global temperature warming to below a certain level. As the change of presidents has since occurred after the Agreement was accepted, the United States has recently announced a plan to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, being the only country to do so. The United States decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement is the best option for the countries economy.
With the Agreement being largely targeted at the more developed countries, Trump believes that the agreement is not fair to the United States (Simon-Lewis, 2017). This Agreement requires the financial assistance from the developed countries in order to stop the climate issues from effecting the developing countries. As the United States is one of the three countries that emit nearly 60% of the total Greenhouse Gases in the entire world, the Agreement is likely to economically affect those three countries the most. There is a very large inequality of total emissions for the United States as well as China and India on a global Lorenz curve. The United States and China have the two largest climate debt amounts globally. This is largely due to the fact that these countries have the largest populations. In the United States, there are many state level climate initiatives that are believed to affect the climate change in the country in the same capacities as the Paris Agreement would if we were to remain in it.
Before the Agreement
The world as a whole has recognized that the climate issue we have at hand has always been a problem. The International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, was founded in 1988 by the UN Environmental Program and World Meteorological Organization in order to access the scientific risk of the rapidly changing climate. In 1992, the first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change, UNFCCC, was held in Rio at the Earth Summit. Today, the UNFCCC has 196 parties meeting annually which is nearly all of the countries in the world (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2014). In 1997, the world’s first greenhouse gas emissions treaty was implemented, the Kyoto Protocol. Since then there has been a large number of climate initiatives globally, by country and even at the state and provincial levels.
The Agreement
The Agreement is the first time that all nations are brought together to attain a common goal. That goal is to keep global temperatures from warming more than 2C, and more recently below even 1.5C. The other goal is to keep the level of greenhouse gases UNFCCC said, “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (Savaresi, 2016). As a part of the Agreement, the governments involved must reevaluate their strategies that help strengthen the global initiatives toward climate change. This has brought new and seemingly attainable goals to a big issue that the world faces today. The UNFCCC began the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by focusing their efforts on the developed countries but have recently realized they also needed to focus on the developing countries, such as China as it is already one of the largest emitters and the country isn’t fully developed yet. Though the president thinks the current Agreement may be unfair to the United States, it is however the best climate plan globally to date.
Intended Nationally Determined Contributions
The Agreement requires each member party to submit intended nationally determined contributions, INDCs, to show how each country is progressing toward slowing the climate change. The progress will be tracked every five years. Figure 1 below shows the effects of the use of INDCs on the efforts toward keeping the global temperature below 1.5C. As of April 2016, there have been 161 INDCs submitted by 189 of the UNFCCC parties (United Nations, n.d.). A large majority of the 161 INDCs submitted had included adaption plans in order to lessen their effect on the environment, as adapting their climate effects will help in the efforts to continue reevaluating their climate strategies.
Figure 1 (United Nations, n.d.)
Lorenz Curve
The Gini index is used to measure the distribution and economic inequality using the income and wealth distributions. Using a Gini index to interpret the inequality on a Lorenz curve, it was found that the INDCs do not in fact meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement (Zimm & Nakicenovic , 2017). The use of INDCs however, does in fact create more neutrality in the global climate change problem. Figure 2 below shows a Lorenz curve for the average greenhouse gas emissions for 2014, it also shows impact on the distribution when the INDCs are followed through with.
Figure 2 (Zimm & Nakicenovic , 2017)
As shown in the graph below, the INDCs do not make a large difference from the inequalities shown in 2010 to the ones in 2020 and 2030. The difference between the scenarios in 2020 and 2030, is due to conditional pledges from some developing countries. If those conditional pledges were not there, the global mean GHG would actually increase. As said previously, the INDCs are not sufficient enough to meet the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, they will in fact lead to an increase of 2.7C.