The Paris agreement is a mostly voluntary climate pact originally written to both try to reduce warming and withstand the changing political winds in the U.S.

When Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the climate agreement in 2017, the move reverberated around the globe. Nearly 200 nations had committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the pact when it was created in 2015, and they had set ambitious targets to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C, and ideally below 1.5°C.

United States President Donald J. Trump announced yesterday the US’ withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement, the landmark international treaty aiming to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.