John Siciliano of the Washington Examiner details the United Nations’ latest climate-related pursuits.
The United Nations climate agency launched an effort this week to marshal support for strict new targets under the Paris climate change accord, including in the United States.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change kicked off the weeklong discussions on Monday in South Korea with signatories to the Paris Agreement. But Tuesday [was] when the real heavy-lifting [began], as countries [began] to dig into the findings of a new report the IPCC released on meeting a more aggressive global warming target only contemplated under the Paris accord.
The U.N. panel … wants the report to inform how countries that signed on to the Paris accord can prevent the Earth from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius and the effects that warming would have on the globe. The meeting is meant to help inform the development of the “Policymakers Summary,” which will digest the report into policy recommendations that could be hard for some countries to swallow.
Of course, President Trump announced his intent last year to exit from the 2015 Paris deal. But since the U.S. cannot technically remove itself from the accord until 2020, and remains a party to the IPCC, it is likely that the administration will be asked to respond to the report’s findings once the summary is released.
A draft of the “Policymakers Summary” obtained by AFP calls for arresting the growth of global emissions in less than two years, which would likely put enormous strain on the economy by transitioning rapidly from fossil fuels. It calls for emitting no more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050.
