With a $370 billion climate law, the United States has finally joined Europe, years late, to set an example for other major polluters, say experts, pointing out the limits of the American plan.
The adoption on Sunday evening in the US Senate of President Joe Biden’s major climate law, which aims to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 2005, puts the States a little more United States, the world’s largest emitter, on the rails of the Paris Agreement from which its predecessor Donald Trump withdrew.
It also comes to counterbalance the cold snap thrown Friday by China, the second largest emitter in the world, when it announced the freezing of its cooperation with Washington on the climate because of the Taiwanese crisis.
The US package is particularly relevant for the European Union, which is in the process of finalizing the adoption of the “most ambitious climate policy in the world”, explains Michael Pahle, of the Institute for Research on the Impact of Climate Change in Potsdam. . But “EU policy can only succeed – economically and politically – if major emitters and trading partners take similar steps,” he told AFP.
The American text should be definitively adopted by Congress this week. By also addressing concerns about fuel inflation, it demonstrates the possibility of climate legislation “by linking it to things that really matter to ordinary people”, notes Simon Lewis, of University College London. . “It is very important that the world’s largest economy invests in climate with a package of measures aimed at creating jobs and a new, cleaner and greener economy,” Lewis told AFP.
Clean technologies
The Rhodium Group think tank estimates that this “historic” legislation will reduce American emissions by at least 31% by 2040, compared to 2005, or even by 44% if macroeconomic conditions are favorable, in particular by an increase in the price of fossil fuels and cheap renewables.
According to Eric Beinhocker, of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at Oxford Martin School, the American law, which promotes the purchase of solar panels and the acquisition of electric cars, will lead to a “massive increase” in clean technologies and drive down the cost of renewable energy — with global consequences.
A failure of the plan, adopted after 18 months of difficult negotiations, would have been a “major setback for the viability of the Paris Agreement”, according to Mr. Pahle.
The international agreement signed in 2015 enjoins nations to limit global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels; the world is already at nearly 1.2°C.
A “historic compromise”
Despite this overall satisfaction, the experts do not veil their face on the imperfections of the American plan: it includes in particular a boost to the gas pipelines, “a step backwards”, deplores Michael Mann, a renowned American climatologist.
“There are many limits”, also recognizes David Levaï, associate researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), “but it is still a historic compromise” after the “disillusions” since the arrival in power of Joe Biden in 2021.
“Some hoped that this project would be the coffin and the nails in the coffin of fossil fuels,” he told AFP. “In the end there is neither coffin nor nails, but this law ultimately demonstrates that a culture of compromise has nevertheless made it possible to put the climate at the center of public policies and to pass an ambitious project,” he wants to remember.
However, the American and European efforts, if they establish their credibility to negotiate with the rest of the world, will not be enough without the commitment of the other major emitters – China, India and Russia, in the first place. Only action on a global scale would make it possible to achieve the emission reductions necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming, already “felt by all of us”, recalls for his part, Radhika Khosla, of the University of ‘Oxford.