In the first 100 hours of his second term, President Donald Trump repeated history when he withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement — just as he did during his first term in 2017.
The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, commits participating countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the United Nations (U.N.) website, the agreement was the culmination of U.S. climate diplomacy and months of negotiations in Paris in 2015. With the goal of limiting the rise of the average global temperature, more than 196 nations joined the agreement at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris.
The Paris Agreement operates on a five-year cycle. At the beginning of each cycle, the involved parties meet to make, review and adapt nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — plans to minimize greenhouse gas emissions — and limit the global temperature increase to one-and-a-half degrees Celsius.
The Paris Agreement is a financial commitment, where participating countries aim to contribute at least $300 billion annually by 2025. These funds go directly to renewable energy efforts throughout the involved countries.
Trump previously withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, during his first term, citing this financial commitment as too burdensome on the United States. According to the Heritage Foundation, the energy requirements to limit greenhouse gas emissions would lessen U.S. gross domestic product by $2.5 trillion by 2035.
Some people say the United States’ obligation to participate in the treaty differs from other countries’. “We do need to get the climate under control, and it’s a good thing to strive towards,” Max Woolf ’27 said. “But I feel that as a nation we shouldn’t be required by any other countries to try to adhere to a certain [climate] rule, especially because they aren’t the world’s number one superpower.”
A common argument against the treaty is that, with an increasing amount of consumers switching to renewable sources, industrial jobs and businesses that rely on profiting from fossil fuels will disappear. “I feel that industrial jobs, especially in the U.S., are vital for a lot of people because it’s a fairly easy market to get into, and you don’t need a college degree,” Woolf said.
After the Trump administration withdrew in 2017, former President Joe Biden’s administration rejoined the Paris Agreement in early 2021. Part of Biden’s administration’s reasoning was that green energy sources can be less expensive than fossil fuels and other nonrenewable energy.
“A lot of the solutions save money. Solar energy is now cheaper than coal,” science teacher Matthew Casey said. “So if we can focus on solutions that are environmentally and economically [efficient] or invest in solar, wind and batteries to make them affordable, then we are finding climate solutions that are enabling people to afford solutions that they couldn’t previously afford.”
The United States has historically been the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and ranks second in current total emissions after China. Trump’s withdrawal may have a particularly significant long-term impact on the climate because of this.
“You can [already] see the effects of climate change all around, especially in California, from wildfires to unpredictable storms,” Casey said. “Storms are becoming more severe across the country, droughts are becoming drier, summers are hotter and longer and winters are warmer in North America.”
The impacts of the impending changes in climate go beyond worsening natural disasters. “If the climate rises too much, a lot of [organisms] are going to die,” Henry Gray ’27 said. “A lot of important animals that we eat or use in farms … would not want to live [in environments where] the temperatures rise too much. You [would] have to build big indoor farms, which would be a huge economic [strain].”
Lack of action from the U.S. could also impact how the rest of the world tackles climate change. “[The U.S.] stands as a sort of beacon of influence on the world, and if this is the influence that we’re choosing to have, the global community is going to react how they want to react,” said Jules Buckner ’25, who organized a sit-out for climate awareness on Nov. 8, 2024.
Beyond broader environmental concerns, the withdrawal can feel stressful to people looking into the future. “Mentally, the [withdrawal is] affecting people who care about the earth. … But I think ultimately, climate change will affect everybody,” Emma Peterson ’28 said.
Some might feel helpless in the face of the withdrawal, especially as climate change continues to worsen. “I feel like there’s not much that a random kid in San Francisco can do because I’m not in charge. The people in charge are the people who actively don’t want to do anything about it,” Gray said.
Looking towards the future, some worry that youth will be responsible for addressing past climate negligence. “The message that is being sent tells us we don’t really have a voice and that we’re gonna be stuck cleaning up someone else’s mess when we get older,” Tali Siegel ’28 said.
Despite these fears, Casey remains optimistic. “For people that are feeling climate doom, it’s useful to look at all the solutions that we do have at our fingertips,” Casey said. “We have the technology in existence to limit the global temperature rise to one-point-five degrees Celsius. It’s just a question of implementing those through government policy and the will of our leaders.”