Alberta’s environment minister isn’t expecting any changes in how the province will approach climate change, now that Donald Trump will become U.S. President in January.
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Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years, a new study showed Monday, raising hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change.
“The world needs it to step up at this crucial time and deliver the goals that it worked so hard to enshrine in the Paris Agreement”. Signatories to the agreement determined that the global temperature rise must be kept “well below 2°C” by means of varying national targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Paris accord is a bad deal which, as usual, forces the majority of cost and sacrifice on the United States while other nations such as China repeatedly cheat on their own carbon output claims and don’t wind up making the same sacrifices.
The Paris climate agreement will survive a Trump presidency says the USA special envoy on climate change Dr Jonathan Pershing.
As part of the Paris agreement developed countries promised to mobilise at least $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that a business as usual approach in terms of fuel use would lead to a average global temperature increase of 2.6-4.8°C.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in an exclusive interview to AFP, said: “He has made a lot of worrying statements, but I am sure that he will understand the whole importance and seriousness and urgency”. Whichever route he takes, if he does maintain his resolve, this turnaround from the United States being a leader of the process throughout the Obama administration to being a vocal detractor could jeopardise the entire project.
For those convinced that global warming presents a huge threat to the planet, the election of Donald Trump to the White House is a body blow.
“Like an old superhero who comes out of retirement to save the day, we need the European Union to dust off its climate cape and help save the planet”. Kerry eluded, with diplomatic elegance, to elaborate about Trump’s election, but he noted that anyway, he will come to COP22, because, it may even be more important now.
“I don’t think that the process itself will be affected (if) one country, however big and important that country is, decides not to go ahead”, she said on the sidelines of United Nations climate talks in Marrakesh, due to end on Friday.
“There are holdouts among the urban bicoastal elite”, Ebell told FRONTLINE, “but I think we’ve won the debate with the American people in the heartland, the people who get their hands dirty, people who dig stuff up, grow stuff and make stuff for a living, people who have a closer relationship to tangible reality, to stuff”.
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A source on Trump’s transition team told Reuters that the president-elect was looking at options that could allow the United States to pull out within a year, short-circuiting a theoretical four-year wait laid down in the Paris Agreement.
