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Article snippet: President Trump is said to be considering withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, a landmark accord reached in 2015 between 195 countries that seeks to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change by curbing global greenhouse gas emissions. The White House says it has not yet reached a final decision on Paris, and hundreds of corporations and world leaders are lobbying the United States to stay in the pact. Within the administration, some senior officials, including Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, have warned the president that the diplomatic repercussions from leaving could be severe. An American withdrawal would not scuttle the Paris accord, but it could seriously weaken global efforts to avoid drastic climate change. Here’s a primer on how the Paris agreement works — and what could happen if the United States leaves. Under the Paris agreement, every country submitted an individual plan to tackle its greenhouse gas emissions and then agreed to meet regularly to review their progress and prod one another to ratchet up their efforts as the years went by. Unlike its predecessor treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris deal was intended to be nonbinding, so that countries could tailor their climate plans to their domestic situations and alter them as circumstances changed. There are no penalties for falling short of declared targets. The hope was that, through peer pressure and diplomacy, these policies would be strengthened over time... Link to the full article to read more