Activists get hot under collar

FEARS US ADMINISTRATION WILL TURN BACK ON PARIS AGREEMENT

President Donald Trump’s plan for gutting domestic climate change policies is on the table but his administration has left open the question of whether it will turn its back on the landmark Paris Agreement.

The suspense could last for some time, perhaps until the G7 meeting of world leaders in late May, or even the July G20 in Germany, experts say.

In the meantime, business leaders, governments and climate activists everywhere are speculating feverishly on what it would mean for the fight against global warming if Washington were to pick up its climate marbles and go home.

Some are even wondering how much damage Trump could do from within the fold if it opted to stay put.

“Everyone has taken on board the fact that we have entered a zone of turbulence,” Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and, as France’s former climate ambassador, one of the treaty’s main architects, told AFP.

One thing seems clear: the United States under Trump, who has vowed to remove restrictions on coal-fired power plants and shelve more stringent vehicle emissions standards, will be hard put to honour its core Paris commitments.

These include cutting US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2025 and giving billions of dollars in aid for poor countries trying to curb their own emissions and cope with climate impacts.

The 196-nation treaty vows to cap global warming as “well below” 2ºC compared with late 19th-century levels, a goal scientists describe as daunting.

The rapidly falling price of renewable energy, gains in efficiency and a market-driven shift from coal to natural gas will all help to constrain future US emissions.

But Trump’s actions “make it virtually impossible for the United States to fulfil its nationally determined contribution” the name given to voluntary pledges made by all countries under the treaty, said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, in London.

At the same time, Trump’s socalled “skinny budget”, unveiled this month, singled out UN climate funds for axing. – AFP