faculty member here and frederick s party school of global studies at boston university my field of expertise is international environmental cooperation and negotiations and that's part of my work there then climate change is of course an essential area president president trump recently announced his intention to withdraw the united states from the paris accord on climate change now this is going to be a fairly long process has announced its intention to withdraw and the president also said that the united states book affective immediately stop fulfilling its non binding obligation under the paris accords and that involves anything in the national determine contribution that the united states had submitted alongside with joining the accords and the core piece of that was to clean power plan efforts to address vehicle paris accord is a global a legally binding agreement that almost all of the world's countries virtually all of the world countries have joined the accord all of the major economies peace and major greenhouse are part of the court the court is legally binding but the promises that countries have done as part of that the court are outside of the court and they are for not strictly speaking legally the agreements that were part of a political commitment that was that was attached in response to all of the other major players have announced that they will stay with the a court that they will not renew go shave to court to investigate human induced climate change the intergovernmental panel on climate change it's series of reports have been instrumental in this process and for each and every report the intergovernmental panel on climate change have come out with stronger evidence that not only that there is climate change but that humans are the main drivers in this process and right now there is this virtual consensus within the within the scientific community around the core ideas of human induced climate change and human activities releasing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide but also methane and others and those being the main drivers of the current climate change that we are witnessing so there is currently widespread public political acceptance internationally of of climate change of all of the major  countries china india the european union brazil the major and smaller developing countries everyone agrees that climate change is going on and something needs to be done and what there's less widespread agreement on is exactly who should do what in addressing climate change and the way that international law works and the way the international system works countries have to join these agreements voluntarily so it's entirely up to a country whether they want to join the navy you must like the paris accord or not once they do join a legally binding agreement it's they are committed under international law to do it but it's up to them to decide whether they want to join in the first place therefore it's very difficult to decide and they agree meant that appeals to all countries even if they do agree that there is a problem if there's huge disagreement among who should actually do walk what obligations different countries should take on the in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing financial support technology transfer capacity building at what rate they should take action how much money they should commit and so forth it was a very long a difficult negotiation process that resulted in the paris a court the united states under the obama administration was one of the key players in many ways without american leadership and bringing the chinese only globally global agreement around which countries have committed to work forward and one of the goals one of the main objectives of the paris accord is to keep average global some for to surface temperature increases to well below two degrees celsius and aiming to get towards one point five degrees celsius with the commitments the countries have done so far we are nowhere near that so if you calculate all o the promises that they have made in the current national determined contributions we're nowhere near the two degree target estimates differ a little bit because it's it's a little bit difficult to assess exactly what would be the impact of all the different and decease but a lot of estimates put it around three degrees or thereabouts so we're going to need a significant ratcheting up of commitments and efforts over the next decade or so even if that were to happen it's still uncertain whether it is actually possible to reach the two degree celsius targets and pretty much all experts agree that the only way we're go get to the one point five degree target is not only if countries take much more significant action but we also need to find some way to take some of the carbon dioxide that are currently in the atmosphere out of the atmosphere as in we are not going to be able to get to the one and a half degree target by simply ratcheting up existing commitments we're also going to need some technical solutions to trying to get some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere it's unclear or both sort of technically and politically institutionally how how we would move forward of trying to get carbon dioxide out of the at do signing an amendment to the paris accord or a new agreement would be would be one way of doing it it's not at all clear though that an international agreement is is required i think it depends partially on the type of technology di gets developed how it will be done but there is a lot of discussions around various forms of geoengineering there are a lot of people who are very cautious about these kinds of  things because it would be another way in which humans interfere with the natural system and it is currently unclear exactly what kind of consequences that would have there are those other worry about unintended consequences even for human all countries but it will impact countries in different ways and in different stages and in different speeds and also some countries are already more vulnerable to climatic changes  than others i think they have they have less of a less of a buffer zone in when we start seeing greater temperature increases more erratic weather patterns sea level rise some countries will be hit harder than others traditional countries that are being pointed out this particular vulnerable are the low level low lying island states that are particularly sensitive sensitive both to severe weather  india and others that could be hit by storm flood it's storm floods changes in weather patterns and so forth that will also be different impacts in different countries and different regions of the united states would be impacted in different ways the impact here in new england will be different from the impact in florida which will be different from impacts in southern florida in southern california for instance the former secretary is receiving from world presidents and prime ministers and politicians and civil society organizations and church groups and the private sector and business leaders and has become  and issue that has definitely broken out from being simply an environmental issue and it's much more of a sustainable development future of the planet issue