The Paris agreement is complex and works in a slow bureaucratic manner. It’s a mostly voluntary climate pact originally written in ways that would both try to reduce a worsening climate change problem and withstand the changing political winds in the United States.

Trump signed an executive order that begins the process of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, which he also did during his first term.

On his first day back in office as United States president, Donald Trump gave formal notice of his nation’s exit from the Paris Agreement – a vital global treaty seeking to rein in climat