Biden Sets Higher U.S. Goal Under the Climate Pact That Trump Aims to Abandon - Inside Climate News

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : One such analysis by the University of Maryland's Center for Global Sustainability, updated earlier this month, takes into account the results of the election.
57% : "The role of sub-national actors couldn't be more critical in advancing climate action over the next four years," said Alicia Zhao, research manager at UMD's Center for Global Sustainability and lead author of the analysis.
55% : It concluded that the United States could achieve 54 to 62 percent greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2035 across a range of scenarios for federal action -- as long as state and local governments greatly increase climate action.
53% : Climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, has written that global carbon emissions must now drop about 10 percent each year if the world is to maintain the hope -- and the goal of the Paris agreement -- of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
53% : But the incoming Trump administration also could confound state efforts at climate action.
51% : Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based journalism site, projected that Trump's plans would put an additional 4 billion tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, negating -- twice over -- all of the savings from global deployment of wind, solar and other clean technologies over the past five years.
51% : The new goals are due early in 2025.To develop the new 2035 goal, the Biden-Harris Administration analyzed the potential for carbon reductions in every economic sector -- power generation, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture and forestry, the White House said.
50% : "It's good to see a somewhat more ambitious pledge, but it'll be up to states and other national leaders to defy Trump and move us quickly away from planet-heating fossil fuels," said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in an emailed statement.
50% : A recent assessment by the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development found that NDCs that include a strong methane emission reduction component result in about one third of a degree more cooling than those that rely solely on carbon dioxide emission reductions.
48% : And Trump's incoming economic team has talked about increasing oil production by 3 million barrels per day -- about a 25 percent increase -- as part of a drive to reduce consumer prices.
48% : The anticipated 35 percent reduction in methane emissions goes beyond the 30 percent target set in the Global Methane Pledge, a non-binding agreement to reduce methane emissions launched by the U.S. and European Union in 2021.
47% : In his second term, "President Trump will once again deliver clean air and water for American families while Making America Wealthy Again," said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump transition in an email.
45% : But others expressed concern that such pledges lack meaning without concrete steps to reduce use of fossil fuel.
44% : Zhao argued that there was value in the United States submitting an NDC, despite uncertainty over whether the United States can achieve such a strong trajectory of emissions reductions under Trump.
43% : A significant reduction in methane emissions would also go further to curb warming than an NDC that relied solely on carbon dioxide emission reductions.
42% : "Because while the United States federal government under President Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief.
34% : Trump's transition team noted that carbon emissions fell to their lowest level in 25 years during his first term -- a reduction partly due to reduced reliance on coal, a trend which has continued, and partly due to a temporary drop in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.
27% : Biden's new goal for 2035, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, will be a dead letter -- at least for four years -- if Trump follows through on his promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement a second time.
21% : Without an increase in state and local action, the UMD researchers calculate the United States would be on track to just a 48 percent reduction in emissions by 2035 in the case of an extensive rollback of climate action by Trump.
16% : "While Biden's pledge rightly reiterates the need to get off dirty energy, the real work lies in rooting out the corrupting political influence of oil, gas and utilities.

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