Like the Paris Agreement itself, the U.S.-led call would have been non-binding. However such international statements can still have a real-world impact. They signal to businesses that they should invest in clean-energy technologies, and set a standard for other countries to follow.
The draft press release was produced by one of the United States’ potential partners, according to a senior climate diplomat from one of the countries. It “clearly won’t be published” now, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy of the climate talks.
The draft committed countries to making plans that would cut emissions fast enough to hold warming to 1.5 degrees. The countries would set targets covering every sector of their economies, such as agriculture, aviation and transport, and for all greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.
The senior climate diplomat said the U.S. had notified their country only this past weekend that the initiative was no longer being pursued.
While the U.S. political situation has changed dramatically since Trump’s election victory, the decision to drop the statement may also reflect ambivalence from those the Biden team approached to join the deal. The European Union, for example, is a traditional U.S. ally on climate action but is struggling to hit the February deadline for submitting new goals. The EU’s executive is locked in a monthslong transition period during which no substantive new policy commitments are made.
A European negotiator, also granted anonymity because the talks were considered private, said the U.S. floated the idea of a statement before the climate conference with “a lot of parties but never pushed for it to become something more.”
