WASHINGTON, D.C. – If Joe Biden wins the presidency, the former vice president says he would rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day in office.
The United States formally withdrew from the agreement on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump promised to do last year.
“Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it,” Biden tweeted Wednesday in reaction to Trump’s actions.
The agreement is a global pact that was put together by the United Nations in 2015 to help avert the threat of catastrophic climate change.
The 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.
Scientists say that any temperature rise over could have devastating impacts on parts of the planets, including rising sea levels, an increase in tropical storms and worsening droughts and floods.
A total of 189 countries remain committed to the accord, according to The Associated Press.