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Wind turbines in Palm Springs, California: The new US President Joe Biden wants to make the USA a leading nation in the fight against global warming
Photo: Sergio Pitamitz / Purestock / Getty Images
At dawn on Friday on the US east coast, the United States returned to the historically significant treaty of 2015, according to the UN: After the exit under ex-President Donald Trump, the US is now officially part of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, described the US step on Thursday as a “key moment” on the way to more sustainable climate protection.
Guterres also praised the strengthening of US climate policy under President Joe Biden.
The new administration has reversed a few steps taken by the Trump administration.
Among other things, Biden stopped new oil and gas wells on public land.
In 2015, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, the world community agreed to limit the rise in temperature to well below two degrees, if possible 1.5 degrees.
So far, however, the states' plans for saving greenhouse gases are by no means sufficient to achieve this.
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Biden had initiated the return to the climate agreement as one of his most pressing tasks right on his first day at work on January 20 - a 30-day deadline had expired on Friday, completing the re-entry.
USA second highest emissions after China
Under Trump, the USA officially withdrew from the UN agreement to limit climate change at the beginning of November.
The United States has the second highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world after China, with significantly fewer inhabitants.
Biden says he wants America to be a leading nation in the fight against global warming.
To do this, he made the former US Secretary of State John Kerry a political heavyweight as the White House's special envoy to the climate.
Kerry and Guterres are due to attend an event to mark the US re-entry into the treaty on Friday.
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