The Paris Accord

Most Republicans, I’m sure, love 45’s having left the Paris Agreement. But no, we liberals are not happy with this, which cramps their style. The agreement reflects on different countries joining together to find solutions to climate change. Leaving this agreement threw supporters into a tailspin. Pamela Hill states that the World Health Organization has uncovered that “7 million premature deaths are linked to air pollution” (77), (World Health Organization). The air pollution problem is a growing problem on a long list of problems.

Needless to say, the human race is lazy and is not doing their part to help fix our problem here. Air pollutants are inhaled every single day because there are six types of pollutants: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and lead, subject to National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Main greenhouse gases and toxic air pollutants that are considered highly hazardous toxins are part of three categories of air pollutant types as there are aspects of air pollution such as indoor and outdoor air pollution.

The Paris Accord was abandoned because of the belief that it would destroy jobs as well as adversely affect the U.S. economy despite how the U.S. releases “nearly one-fifth of all global emissions, the U.S. withdrawal could undercut collective efforts to reduce carbon output” (Council on Foreign Relations). So you see, leaving the Paris Accord was not the brightest idea since it will keep the United States in the Dark Ages. There is a stated goal to keep Earth’s temperature to be below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). Scientists warn that an irreversible threat to life on this planet will come if we do not keep our end of the environmental bargain.

We will have to wait awhile before the United States can rejoin the Paris Accord seeing as our country is a global pariah for doing this or that. At least one environmental positive is there, the shrinking of the ozone hole. This means that we humans are capable of resolving our environmental disaster-causing lifestyles. Chlorofluorocarbons were introduced after World War II back when they seemed safe for humans, but you see, “by the 1980s, scientists began to make the connection, between alarming signs of ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere, especially the hole over Antarctica, and the presence of CFCs” (83). This hole has now shrunk a bit, but it might go towards getting worse eventually.

The not so smart move to exit the Paris Accord will make things worse for the United States. China is moving forward without us because the United States doesn’t influence the clean energy race much. We are meant to be working together as a planet but the current unstable elements within the United States governmental bodies are making this situation worse, not better, and it will dig its own grave. In the end, we are only making things worse for ourselves.

If the United States gets even more xenophobic than usual, this is a cause for alarm since we do not want to isolate ourselves from global concerns. Our toxic air that we breathe daily on this planet causes much chronic illness. You can die from heart disease, stroke, or worse, lung cancer. Immune systems can only help so much. We are a very unhealthy people, we Earth humans, because when people die of air pollution, you see that something needs to change, such as British schoolgirl who died after “one of the "worst air pollution episodes in her locality." The pollution problem is sad, and not everybody is willing to work at fixing it. We need to fix it as a civilization, not just as individuals waging a quiet war.

Works Cited

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/consequences-leaving-paris-agreement

https://www.ecowatch.com/schoolgirls-death-is-the-first-to-be-directly-linked-to-air-pollution-2584024046.html

Hill, Pamela. Environmental Protection: What Everybody Needs To Know. Oxford University Press: 2017.

https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/