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The United States (U.S.) is one of 196 parties signing the Paris Agreement, the first legally binding international treaty on climate change. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

Each nation-signer has submitted national climate action plans, but very few countries have achieved their own goals, and stronger goals will be needed by everyone to avoid the consequences of temperature increase above 1.5°C.
The U.S. government and the U.S. economic system (U.S. corporations and banks, in particular) have played an especially negative role in creating and responding to the climate emergency. They have deceived the U.S. people about the reality of climate change and have continued to engage in practices that worsen the climate emergency. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in 2017, undermining global efforts to handle the climate emergency and setting back U.S. progress toward reducing U.S. emissions. (The U.S. rejoined the Paris Agreement in 2020 under President Biden.)

As a major economic power and the second largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions (historically the largest), U.S. action is vitally important.
Scientific reports make it clear that climate change is a global disaster in the making and will get progressively worse until it is addressed. Because global efforts to address the climate emergency have been late and inadequate, the problem is now so large that it will take significant resources and collective action to address it fast enough to avoid catastrophic consequences. According to these reports,
we have a very small window of time in which to make large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Recently U.S. emissions have leveled off, now it is important that they fall rapidly.

The Paris target for the U.S. is to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030. In contradiction to its Paris commitments, the U.S. government continues to support the U.S. fossil fuel industry in expanding the production of fossil fuels. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer and third largest coal
producer. Far more coal, gas, and oil are already being produced than we can burn and still stay
below 2°C. Continued production and use will be catastrophic.

The U.S. government (working with the U.S. fossil fuel industry) undermines efforts to provide poorer nations with the resources needed to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and address the already devastating impact of climate change on their peoples and lands. These nations (who have had their own resources stripped away through colonialism and imperialism) have asked wealthy nations
for faster action. They have asked for financial resources—to make their societies more climate resilient, address what they are already experiencing, and transition from fossil fuels to renewables. If they continue to rely on fossil fuels for their development, they will add to theincrease of greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. also blocks international efforts to exclude the fossil fuel industry from the UN climate talks.
To avoid global catastrophe, the U.S. must do the following: stop relying on fossil fuels, devote significant resources to the transition to a renewable energy economy with net-zero emissions, and aid poorer nations in their efforts. If we delay, the cost of taking action in the future (if it is even possible to do so) would greatly exceed the cost of taking action now. The U.S. economic system has conditioned its people to consume far more than they need in order to have good lives.

This excess consumption adds significantly to our emissions. Only a small percentage of the world’s population consumes at the U.S. level. A recent study shows that individual behavioral changes
on a massive scale could reduce emissions between nineteen and twenty-five percent.
These changes could include the following (not in order of priority): substituting other forms
of transportation for gas-powered individual vehicles, electrifying our homes and cutting power usage, installing rooftop solar and solar water heaters or micro-wind, recycling, using energy efficient lighting and appliances, not purchasing items unless we have a real need for them, eating more plant-based foods and less animal protein, reducing food waste, and composting.

Many people in the U.S. have the means take such action now. Every country, every signer of the Paris
Agreement, must take action to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement, and work to strengthen our future commitments to reduce emissions to limit global temperature increase and bring temperatures back down below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels as quickly as possible.
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To accomplish this goal, the United States government must do the following:.

• Remain a signer of the 2015 Paris Agreement (reject candidates who would withdraw) and
  increase its commitment to it
• Carry out its financial commitments to the United Nations and to international climate
  financing entities, such as the Loss and Damage and Green Climate Funds
• Commit to policies and legislation that will require industries and other sectors of the
  economy to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions so the U.S. will be compatible with a
  1.5° pathway. as required by the Paris Agreement (reduce emissions by at least 62%-65% below
  2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050). Then work toward accomplishing the U.S. “fair
  share” global mitigation effort of 195% below 2005 emissions levels.
• Stop all support for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels Commit large financial resources to exploring and carrying out natural carbon solutions
• Support a “conflict of interest policy” to ban fossil fuel industries from the UN climate talks
  
  To accomplish this goal, U.S. industries must do the following:
  
• Convert from fossil fuel to renewable energy as rapidly as possible, without waiting for economic
  incentives to do so.
• Begin planning for an economy that is not based on unlimited growth. (Unending and unlimited growth has brought us to the current situation.)
• Adopt ethical and rational means to extract the minerals and other resources needed for the transition to a renewable energy economy, without reproducing the historically unjust dynamics of global resource exploitation
  .
  To accomplish this goal, the people of the United States must do the following:
  .
• Organize to accomplish the actions above
• Overcome the conditioning that drives us to acquire and consume more than we need. (There
  are enough resources available for everyone to have a good life.)
• Decide to use resources rationally without waiting for governments and industries to give
  up their destructive policies. (Official leaders have so far failed to take enough action—we can
  and must take leadership.)
• Share our resources with those who are facing the crisis with insufficient resources. (We are all in
  this together.)