The United States downplayed its obligations for addressing climate change during an international court hearing Wednesday aimed at determining whether countries are violating international law by polluting the atmosphere.
Biden administration officials argued that the 2015 Paris Agreement is the primary mechanism to hold countries accountable for climate action, meaning nations are only required to submit emission targets under that pact — but not necessarily achieve them. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to withdraw the U.S. from the nonbinding agreement, a move that would dissolve any obligations the U.S. has under that deal.
“The U.N. climate change regime, with the Paris Agreement at its core, is the only international legal regime specifically designed by states to address climate change,” Margaret Taylor, a legal adviser for the State Department, told the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Cooperation through those deals, she argued, “provide the best hope for protecting the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations.”
Taylor added that the U.S. and other nations can’t be held responsible for the impact of their pollution before those global treaties were created beginning in the 1990s.
