Debunking Senator Ted Cruz’s Claims on Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement

Here are the facts, Senator Cruz. Last year (2020) tied for the hottest on record. It also saw record-breaking heat extremes (129 F in aptly named Death Valley), so many named-storms in the Atlantic that meteorologists had to resort to the Greek alphabet for new names, and the invention of a new word–gigafire–because so many acres burned in the American West.  The world also experienced a huge jump in the amount of losses from natural hazards ($210 billion in 2020 as compared to $166 billion in 2019 according to Munich Re) and the lion’s share of those fell to the United States ($95 billion). The record for disasters costing more than $1 billion dollars in the United States was also shattered in 2020. According to NOAA, there were 22 such events. All of these tragedies are consistent with climate trends driven by the accumulation of human-emitted greenhouse gases, according to climate scientists. Rejoining the Paris Agreement signals that the United States intends to do its part to cut global emissions to reduce future warming and, importantly, to reduce future losses from climate-worsened disasters for all Americans. 

Alice C. Hill

David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment

Council on Foreign Relations