On November 4, while the outcome of the presidential election was still undecided, Donald Trump officially began the year-long process that would take the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords. This makes the United States only one of three nations that haven’t ratified the agreement, which aims to curb carbon emissions worldwide. But with Joe Biden, who has promised to rejoin the accords set to assume the presidency in January, this move will have little practical effect. However, it shows perfectly how politicized the topic of climate change has become in this country.
A study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that less than half of Americans think that the earth is warming because of climate change. Furthermore, only 27% of Americans think that there is a scientific consensus in regards to climate change, and only 39% think that climate scientists can be trusted to give accurate information about climate change. This was a very divisive issue between Democrats and Republicans — for example, 79% of liberal Democrats believe in human-caused climate change compared to 15% of Republicans.
The end result of this is that American politicians are likely to continue with stunts like pulling out of the Paris Agreement, even when these actions are unlikely to change anything in regards to climate policy. With so little trust in the actions of climate scientists, it can be advantageous for politicians like Donald Trump to make big anti-climate change moves to bolster trust in his own party instead of climate scientists. So while the US is unlikely to fully pull out of the Paris Agreement, these moves are likely to muddy the waters around the issue and contribute to the polarization around this issue in the US.
The more that politicians opposed to climate policy can make this issue a political fight between two parties as opposed to a scientific problem, the easier it becomes to win people to their side. And while Joe Biden is occupied undoing the work of his predecessor, he can’t begin creating his own climate policy without getting entrenched in a partisan fight.