PERILOUS Pandemonium

As wars are ravaging lands and politics poisoning the planet, climate crises no longer remain natural disasters but have become engineered battlegrounds where nations' retreat and corporations' greed are fed under the garb of realising a dream of sustainable future

- DIPANKAR DEY

Apprehensions for global warming and environmental crisis have been further aggravated as the world is passing through a phase of manmade disasters across many war zones in Asia, Europe and Africa. Genocide in Gaza is the worst human tragedy that the world leaders have miserably failed to address since 2022. Unrestrained use of deadly weapons destroys the total ecosystem by contaminating air, water, and land. The destruction and displacement caused by war, along with the resulting pollution and resource depletion, significantly hinder efforts to mitigate climate change and exacerbate its effects.

In such a crisis period, the President of the USA—the nation that holds the dubious distinction of being the second largest annual emitter of planet-warming gases, and the highest total emitter since the late 19th Century—has declared to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which was adopted by nearly 200 countries in the French capital in December 2015. It came into force on November 4, 2016, and nearly all the nations, including the USA, agreed to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

After returning to the Oval Office for the second time in January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that argued that such agreements "do not reflect our country's values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives" and "unfairly burden the United States," citing costs to American taxpayers. He made a similar announcement in 2017 at the start of his first presidency. His successor, Joe Biden, rejoined in 2021 at the start of his term as president. This time, under UN rules, the US has to wait a year until it is officially out. The US is the only nation to have withdrawn from the Paris deal, and joins Iran, Libya and Yemen as the countries outside the agreement.