Biden says he will re-join the WHO, Paris Climate Accord ‘on his first day’
The announcements underscore fundamental differences between Trump and Biden.
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by While on the election trail, U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden vowed to ‘follow the science” when making policies on several things, including climate change and COVID-19. Now, in a series of public statements since the election was called in his favour Saturday, Biden says he will re-join the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Climate Accord ‘on his first day in office.’
In 2017, Trump made headlines when he announced his departure from the Paris Agreement, an international contract to fight climate change, which is signed by 197 countries. Then, in late May of this year, Trump accused the WHO of “being under China’s control” and notified the UN Secretary General of his plans to withdraw from the organization, effective July 6, 2021.
As CNN points out, the two strategies underscore fundamental differences between Trump and Biden, with Biden trusting the organizations and pacts that Trump does not.
Biden has already begun tackling the pandemic which, at the time of this writing, has killed 238,000 Americans. In a Monday speech, he implored the public to wear masks and vowed to heed the advice of health experts.
In a Monday Op-ed, Nature called the election of Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris a ‘glimmer of hope’ in an otherwise ‘tragic’ year.
“When this journal endorsed Biden’s candidacy for president of the United States, we did so in part because of his campaign pledges to restore the place of science in government and to return the country to its previous international commitments,” reads an excerpt from the piece.
“We are confident that Biden, Harris and their team will respect the need for, and integrity of, regulatory agencies, and that they will quickly roll back restrictions on visas for international students and researchers imposed by Trump’s administration. Policies that adversely targeted women, people of colour, refugees and migrants, members of sexual and gender minorities, and people from other under-represented groups must also be erased, for good.”
According to CNN, Biden has also pledged to repeal the Trump travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries and reinstate the DACA program, which allows “dreamers” i.e., undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, to remain in America.
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