Immediately after Biden was inaugurated he went on to sign seventeen executive orders, memorandums, and proclamations. One of which would be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. Many of his supporters rejoiced at these actions believing it to be a step forward to a cleaner world. However, these actions are in fact a step back from that goal.
Despite the United States reducing emissions every year, unlike the worlds first and and fourth biggest emitters China and India, since Trump came into office in 2016, Biden still opted to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. This mandates that the United States fund other countries to reduce their emissions, while those countries are under no requirement to actually make a change, benefiting China and European politicians over American citizens.
Leading up to the Paris conference, participants in the agreement called for a Green Climate Fund that would collect $100 billion per year by 2020. The goal of the fund was to subsidize green energy and provide finances for climate adaptation in underdeveloped nations. This was mainly introduced to incentivize these nations to join the agreement.
A substantial amount of these nations were, and currently are, under criticism for the corrupt distribution of foreign funds, meaning that the finances are ineffectively applied to sustainable projects, resulting in massive concerns for donors.
For example, in 2013, $250,000 for flood defenses in the Satkhira coastal region were rerouted from the national climate change trust fund according to, Transparency International, a climate finance unit created in 2010 to combat issues of this nature. Budgets were also heavily exaggerated by Bangladesh’s Water Development Board in order to receive larger funding.
Currently, there’s no procedure to punish or suspend activities in case of wrongdoing, which is highly problematic. There is also no system of monitoring to ensure the proper allocation of these funds.
Another issue with the Paris Agreement is its extreme ineffectiveness. As of 2017, none of the major industrialized nations were implementing the policies they had envisioned and never met their pledged emission reduction targets. The pledges for carbon emission are not even enough to maintain the global warming standard of below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).
The Paris Agreement upholds the United States to a high standard that none of the other countries in the agreement are obligated to follow, does not reach the standard of emission reduction set by climate scientists, and is an insecure use of taxpayer dollars that could be effectively applied domestically to reach this goal.
Sources
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/07/29/campaigners-warn-of-climate-finance-corruption-risk/
https://blog.transparency.org/2011/09/21/climate-finance-in-bangladesh-where-has-all-the-money-gone/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/nations-miss-paris-targets-climate-driven-weather-events-cost-billions/#close