A historic proposal, titled The Paris Agreement, brought forth by the United Nations went into effect on November 4. The Paris Agreement is the first of it’s kind a proposal that includes all of the UN affiliated countries in a effort to stall the effects of climate change.
The agreement, which was ratified in October, is a landmark in environmental conservation, and has been signed by nations such as the United States, India, China and the European Union. The goal of the agreement is for countries to put forth an effort to keep the global temperature from rising no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, which is the agreed upon limit of safety regarding global warming, The Guardian reported.
“The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Said the statement released by the United Nations. “Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.”
The UN met again in Marrakech, Morocco on November 7 to discuss how to better put their new agreement into effect, while also meeting with representatives of large corporations such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Peabody, Shell and RioTinto, The Guardian reported.
The meeting, which focuses on exactly how the countries and companies could work hand-in-hand to reduce the amount of carbon emissions produced, will last until November 18.
President-elect Donald Trump has said during his campaign that he plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, as well as withdraw all U.S. funding from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Because the agreement has not yet been ratified by the Senate, Trump could easily make good on his promise to remove the U.S. from the historic proposal, Scientific American reported.
Sophomore, Hannah Reed, said that while she considers herself a supporter of environmental conservation, she doesn’t agree with how the Paris Agreement has gone about their proposal.
“I am a huge supporter of regulating emissions; however, I don’t think we should be bound.” Reed said. “The way the agreement is made is that the countries are allotted a certain percent of emissions, and the United States would end up compensating for other countries. We will have more regulations that will end up hurting our economy.”
With meetings for the historic proposal still carrying on, and our new president-elect threatening to remove the U.S. from the agreement, the future of the Paris Agreement is still up in the air.
