An Agreement for the Environment

The U.S. and China, two countries with the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions, have agreed to cut back on pollution.

The presidents of China and the U.S., two countries with the highest level of greenhouse emissions, have reached a historic agreement in Beijing. They have pledged to cut back. It should be mentioned that the U.S. was one of the few countries that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, refusing to implement a system to reduce contamination. Most of the environmental actions proposed by the White House have been rejected by the Republican Party, which holds a majority in Congress.

Both Xi Jinping and Barack Obama believe that this recent agreement will encourage other countries to cut their own emissions because China and the U.S. have been the main obstacles in reaching an international accord against climate change. This bilateral project is a historic agreement since it marks one of the first times that these countries have discussed cutting back on carbon emissions.

The People’s Republic of China has pledged to control carbon emissions by 2030. In order to achieve this goal, clean energy sources will account for 20 percent of its total energy production from this year on. As for the U.S., it has pledged to cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. The U.S. will start reducing its emissions in 2025. Having committed to reaching these goals, Obama will have a problem convincing the Republican opposition to support this project.

We all must bear in mind that the reduction levels announced by the U.S. double the pace that the United States had planned for the period between 2005 and 2020. The remaining countries of the world expect that the two countries with the highest emissions will achieve an agreement showing that the only way to save the planet is by cutting emissions in a drastic way, without exceptions.