What the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement means

He said it, he did it: as soon as he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump staged the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris agreement, by signing in front of a galvanized crowd a presidential decree then a letter addressed to the United Nations. « With immediate effect »he specified, while the procedure is supposed to take a year. As he did in 2017 during his first mandate, he thus excludes the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet (behind China) from the global effort against global warming: his country joins the club restricted from those which, like Iran, Libya or Yemen, have not ratified this agreement aimed at maintaining the rise in global temperature « well below 2 °C » compared to pre-industrial levels, or if possible 1.5°C.

While the previous two years were the hottest on record, at a time when Los Angeles is still burning, the signal sent by Donald…