Leaving the Paris Climate Accord: Why it Matters

“The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” President Donald Trump announced Thursday afternoon, keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail. The U.S. will renegotiate the deal or work on creating an entirely new deal on “terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its tax payers,” he said. “If we can [renegotiate] that’s great, and if we can’t that’s fine.”

The signatories of the 2015 Paris climate accord pledge to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gases and financing poorer countries to do the same. The United States is just behind China as the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide.