President Barack Obama announced on Saturday the USA would formally join a sweeping global emissions-cutting accord reached a year ago, boosting efforts to bring the accord into effect by the end of 2016.
Advertisement
“Ratifying the agreement accords with China’s policy of actively dealing with climate change”, a proposal on reviewing and ratifying the agreement, approved by Chinese lawmakers, reportedly said.
US President Barack Obama is due to arrive in China later Saturday for a G20 summit in the eastern city of Hangzhou, and is expected to announce the formal joining of the accord with President Xi Jinping.
Obama departed for Hangzhou on Friday and was to meet with Xi on Saturday ahead of the summit.
The historic deal reached in Paris in December has been signed by 180 countries, but will only take effect after 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions have ratified it – making it binding.
The U.S. and China together comprise 40 percent of world emissions, their ratification makes it very likely for the agreement to come into force this year. “So if they ratify the agreement it will bring the Paris agreement entering into force much closer to reality”, said Li Shuo, the Beijing-based senior climate policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia.
Whilst the report notes the importance of switching from coal and other fossil fuels to “green” energy sources, the profiles of Latin American member countries show they face bigger challenges.
Some 30 countries around the world have taken steps to cut subsidies in the last three years, from India, which eliminated diesel subsidies in 2014, to Germany, which aims to remove coal subsidies by 2018, said Helen Mountford, programme director for the New Climate Economy initiative and a WRI economist. They consume 10 to 15 percent more fuel than similar trucks in the United States and other developed markets – a gap Beijing hopes to reduce as it develops new fuel-efficiency standards for these vehicles.
The U.S. and China are poised to lead the way in the G20 (on climate action) so other countries will follow. With less than five months left in the White House, Obama is racing to cement his legacy as a leader on climate change.
The agreement can only take effect once at least 55 nations accounting for at least 55 per cent of global emissions ratify it.
Signatories to today’s letter – which also include mayors of New York City, Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, Cape Town, Rome and Seoul – also commit to setting out “concrete plans for how we will deliver the goals of the Paris Agreement in our cities”.
China and the U.S. together produce about 40 percent of emissions.
“Accepting Australia’s current 2030 emissions-reduction targets rather than the action required to limit global warming to less than 2℃ means the report’s recommendations will not protect Australians from risky climate change”, said council member Will Steffen. Before China’s announcement, only 23 countries, responsible for just 1 percent of global emissions, had joined in.
He said the report outlines ways in which the electricity sector can significantly cut its emissions by 2050, but none that is in line with meeting the Paris agreement’s goal of keeping global warming below 2℃.
Australia is on track to meet the country’s 2020 target of a 5 percent cut by 2000, but the country’s emissions target has been criticised as not enough to meet the United Nations target of 26 to 28 percent emissions reduction by 2030.
Advertisement
If the United States and China, as the two major players in terms of emissions, don’t both carry forward climate policy, Peterson believes there’s little point to further climate protection efforts.
