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Biden’s policies on climate change

But the United States has wavered even before Trump, most notably on a key global climate treaty forged in 1997, known as the Kyoto Protocol. The United States signed that global climate treaty in 1998 under the Clinton administration, but did not ratify the deal and backed away from it under President George W. Bush.

Over the years, the United States has failed to hit its own emissions-cutting targets — even as overall emissions have decreased. It also has not adequately contributed to a fund meant to help vulnerable nations that have done little to cause climate change but are most affected by it.

“There’s no papering it over,” John Holdren, an environmental policy professor at Harvard who served as President Barack Obama’s top science adviser, said of the loss of trust the United States has suffered internationally during the Trump era. “It’s going to involve more than just saying we are back. We are going to have to demonstrate we are back, and we are going to have to demonstrate it powerfully.”

Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and key architect of the Paris agreement, told reporters recently that the best thing Biden can do to prove that he is serous about global climate action is to make progress domestically.

“The U.S. will have to do its homework at home first in order to regain credibility,” she said, adding: “Yes, the Biden administration has put out their plans. But we’re going to have to see the plans being enacted. We’re going to have to see the rollbacks of the rollbacks.”

That part won’t come easily.

Biden can make headway using executive orders and shaping policies at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and other corners of the government. But any far-reaching national climate blueprint, or any major stimulus spending on green energy, will need the blessing of a deeply divided Congress.

Unlike Obama, Biden also will confront a rockier relationship with China, currently the world’s largest emitter. And he faces intense pressure from activists to move quickly, as well as the growing urgency created by raging wildfires, crippling hurricanes and other climate-fueled catastrophes.