Today, House Democrats introduced H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, a bill to prevent the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2017 the Trump administration announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement, a key tool for ensuring globally coordinated action to address the climate crisis, but it cannot legally do so until 2020.
ActionAid USA’s Director of Policy and Campaigns, Brandon Wu, said: “We fully support the goal of the Climate Action Now Act to hold the U.S. to the climate commitments it made to the world in the Paris Agreement. But we also recognize that those commitments, made under the Obama administration, fell terribly short of the scale of action we need if we’re serious about fixing the climate crisis. According to an analysis of the Paris Agreement pledges by ActionAid and hundreds of civil society organizations, the U.S. fair share of climate action is 5-6 times larger than what we committed to do in 2015.
“Staying in the Paris Agreement is a must, but it’s only a first step. We need ambitious proposals – like some of the ideas being put forward under the umbrella of the Green New Deal – to ensure the survival of vulnerable communities and a transition to a just and sustainable world.”
Read Brandon’s bio here.
ENDS