Welcome Back? U.S. Officially Back to Paying for Other Countries' Emissions in Paris Climate Agreement

Nick Kangadis | February 19, 2021
DONATE
Font Size

We did it! The U.S. finally did it and now elitist politicians can go back to pretending to care about the environment. What am I talking about, you might ask?

Well in case you couldn't tell from the headline, the United States is officially part of the "Paris climate club," as Reuters so eloquently put it in their gushing headline. 

According to Reuters:

The United States officially rejoined the Paris climate agreement on Friday, reinvigorating the global fight against climate change as the Biden administration plans drastic emissions cuts over the next three decades[...]

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry will take part in virtual events on Friday to mark the U.S. re-entry, including appearances with the ambassadors to the UK and Italy, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and U.N. climate ambition envoy Michael Bloomberg.

You know why the U.S. rejoining the agreement is so "reinvigorating?" Because the U.S. basically pays for the bad environmental behavior of two of the biggest emitters on the planet, India and China.

Back in 2017, when President Donald Trump's administration announced they were leaving the Paris climate accords, former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt told Fox News that a major part of the reason that Trump wanted to leave the agreement was because it was monetarily unfair to the U.S., who provided the bulk of the funds in the agreement.

"India didn’t have to take any steps in the agreement to reduce [carbon dioxide] emissions until they received $2.5 trillion in aid," Pruitt told host Martha MacCallum. "China didn’t have to take any steps until the year 2030."

Basically, and the United Nations (UN) even published this on their website, the most developed countries were and are "required to provide financial resources to enable developing countries to undertake emissions reduction activities under the Convention and to help them adapt to adverse effects of climate change."

And who are some of the countries that the UN considers "mostly developing countries," or "Non-Annex I" as they put it? How about China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? Those are just some of the countries that the "industrialized countries" have to shell out money for because they have no interest in protecting the environment.

Doesn't it feel good to be back?

donate