Trump – Page 4 – The Climate Post

June 8, 2017

Nonfederal Entities Declare Commitment to Paris Agreement

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Despite President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, nonfederal entities are saying they will continue to fight climate change. Twelve states and Puerto Rico have formed the U.S. Climate Alliance, committing to uphold the global climate accord, and leaders of 211 cities have declared themselves “Climate Mayors,” promising to work toward the accord’s goals. Many of those same governors and mayors are among some 1,200 signatories, including more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies and 170-plus universities, vowing to cut emissions (subscription) in an open letter released Monday to the international community.

“The Trump administration’s announcement undermines a key pillar in the fight against climate change and damages the world’s ability to avoid the most dangerous and costly effects of climate change,” said the letter. “Importantly, it is also out of step with what is happening in the United States.”

Going by the name “We Are Still In,” the coalition called itself “the broadest cross section of the American economy yet assembled in pursuit of climate action.”

On Tuesday, Bloomberg Philanthropies said it would work with the coalition’s governors, mayors and business leaders to quantify greenhouse gas reductions. Although the organization does not expect to send a formal submission to the United Nations, it will develop a “societal nationally determined contribution” (subscription).

Some legal scholars have warned that, depending on their nature, actions taken by states in the U.S. Climate Alliance and “We Are Still In” coalition could raise constitutional questions under the foreign affairs pre-emption doctrine or Compacts Clause (subscription).

The first test case may be Hawaii, which on Tuesday became the first state to pass state-specific legislation that claims to legally implement portions of the Paris Agreement.

“Climate change is real, regardless of what others may say,” said Hawaii Governor David Ige. “Hawaii is seeing the impacts first hand. Tides are getting higher, biodiversity is shrinking, coral is bleaching, coastlines are eroding, weather is becoming more extreme. We must acknowledge these realities at home.”

Ige signed Senate Bill 559, which “expands strategies and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide,” and House Bill 1578, which aims to “identify agricultural and aquacultural practices to improve soil health and promote carbon sequestration—the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change.”

Post–Paris U.S. Climate Change Efforts: What Happens Now?

In his Paris Agreement exit speech, Trump promised to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or really an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.” But what concessions the United States could gain from a renegotiation are unclear, and attempts to forge a new deal may not have willing participants. In a joint statement issued an hour after Trump’s speech, Italy, Germany and France said “we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies.”

Greenwire reported that legal experts say a future president could get the United States back into the Paris Agreement, from which the earliest official exit date would be November 4, 2020, in just 30 days under a process by accession (subscription).

In the meantime, at least one former Environmental Protection Agency head, William Reilly (who serves as chair of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Advisory Board), suggested that the United States should make a “clean break” from international climate talks.

“I think that the worst possible outcome here is to announce an intended withdrawal from the agreement but to continue to participate in the deliberations of the parties,” said Reilly, adding that the United States might attempt to “reduce the commitments or aspirations that are agreed to in future conferences of the parties” (subscription).

Fact Checkers Question President Trump’s Paris Agreement Exit Speech

President Donald Trump never mentioned science in his speech announcing America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement (subscription). In an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, U.S. Environmental Protection head Scott Pruitt, a vocal critic of the pact, appeared to suggest that science played no role in the exit decision, insisting that the focus of discussions about a withdrawal was “on the merits and demerits of the Paris accord.”

Multiple media have highlighted inaccuracies in Trump’s presentation of the accord. The Washington Post noted that Trump’s case against the agreement—that it would hurt the U.S. economy and that it treated the United States unfairly—ignored the benefits that could come from tackling climate change, including potential green jobs, and misrepresented the nature of the agreement. Specifically, emissions reduction pledges reflect non-legally binding nationally determined plans and the reality that developed countries, on a per capita basis, often produce more greenhouse gases than developing countries.

A video posted by The New York Times on its website questioned many of Trump’s claims, one of which was that the agreement would in effect transfer coal jobs to China and India. In fact, the voluntary Paris agreement doesn’t stop Trump’s loosening of restrictions on coal, a U.S. industry in decline in large part because of domestic access to cheap and abundant natural gas—a just released U.S. Energy Information Administration report says coal consumption for electricity sank last year to its lowest level (subscription) since 1984. Although China is building relatively less-polluting coal plants because it lacks such access, it has canceled more than 100 coal plants and expects to peak its coal use before the 2030 date set forth in a pre-Paris climate agreement with the United States. In its Paris pledge, India committed to obtain 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took issue with the president’s statement that even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, it would produce only a two-tenths of 1-degree Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Although Trump did not name his source, Reuters reported that he was referring to a MIT study finding that if countries honored their Paris pledges, global warming would slow by between 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2100—not two-tenths of 1-degree Celsius. The point of the article, according to one of the author’s co-authors, was not to diminish the contribution of the agreement but to illustrate that further actions would be needed to avert catastrophic warming.

June 1, 2017

EU and China Forge Climate Accord as Trump Pulls Plug on Paris Agreement

President Donald Trump has decided to exit the Paris Agreement, the set of voluntary emissions reductions to which all but two countries are signatories—a win for 22 Republican Senators and a small group of advisers and a disappointment to those who lobbied for remaining in the agreement, including executives of the biggest global corporations and energy majors, national security officials, many top White House officials, and many heads of state. The United States now joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only holdouts to the accord.

“To fulfill my solemn duty to protect America,” said Trump, “the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.” He added, “But begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States . . . So we’re getting out but we’ll start to negotiate and we’ll see if we can make a deal that’s fair.”

Trump said he is keeping his campaign promise to “put American workers first” and claimed that the accord was poorly negotiated by the Obama administration. He offered no details about how he plans to disentangle the United States from the Paris Agreement (subscription).

The nonbinding Paris Agreement was designed to allow countries to tailor their climate plans to their domestic circumstances and to alter them as circumstances changed. But the hope was that peer pressure and diplomacy would lead to increased ambition and action to curb global-warming emissions. Nonetheless, Trump advisers like the chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon made the argument that staying in the Paris accord could entail a series of legal obligations—an argument rejected by some legal scholars.

Reaction to a likely withdrawal prompted world leaders to reiterate their commitment to the global pact and drew the ire of some.

European Commission President Jean Claude-Juncker said Trump doesn’t “comprehensively understand” the terms of the accord, though European leaders tried to explain the process for withdrawing to him “in clear, simple sentences” during summit meetings last week. “It looks like that attempt failed,” Juncker said. “This notion, ‘I am Trump, I am American, America first and I am getting out,’ that is not going to happen.” Juncker also warned that it would take years to extricate the United States from the Paris Agreement.

This week, an administration official laid out three ways the United States could leave the accord. First, Trump could announce he is pulling the United States from the deal, which would trigger a three-year withdrawal process that wouldn’t conclude until November 2020 under the deal’s terms—actual withdrawal would take perhaps another year. Second, Trump could declare that the Paris Agreement is actually a legal treaty that requires Senate approval, which it is unlikely to get. Third, Trump could withdraw the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—the treaty that underpins the Paris Agreement. Although this process would take just one year, it would remove the United States from all global climate diplomacy.

Yesterday, as media outlets reported the likely decision by Trump on the Paris Agreement, came word of the first-ever bilateral agreement on climate change (subscription) between the European Union (EU) and China. According to a statement being prepared before an EU-China summit in Brussels starting today, members of the new alliance will say they are determined to “lead the energy transition” toward a low-carbon economy. The new pact calls for the EU to support the rollout of China’s national emissions trading system, likely hastening linkage of that system with the EU carbon market, the world’s largest. It also calls for the two partners to help poor countries develop green economies. A draft called the Paris Agreement an “historic achievement” and “proof that with shared political will and mutual trust, multilateralism can succeed in building fair and effective solutions to the most critical global problems of our time.”

The new pact may help to fill the void left by China’s former partnership with the Obama administration, a partnership instrumental in persuading nearly 200 countries to support the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Economists Say Carbon Tax Is Needed to Avert Climate Catastrophe

On Monday, 13 leading economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, said carbon dioxide should be taxed at $40 to $80 per metric ton by 2020 and at as much as $100 per metric ton by 2030 to stop catastrophic global warming. The idea is to give businesses and governments an incentive to lower emissions even when fossil fuels are cheap—an idea rejected by the Trump administration and embraced by the world’s largest emissions trading coalition, the European Union, albeit at a carbon price—$6.70 per ton—well below that recommended by the report released by the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices.

The report, which is backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, concluded that a “well-designed” carbon price is an “indispensable” element of any strategy to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining economic growth.

“The world’s transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy is the story of growth for this century,” Stiglitz and Stern said in a joint statement. “We’re already seeing the potential that this transformation represents in terms of more innovation, greater resilience, more livable cities, improved air quality and better health. Our report builds on the growing understanding of the opportunities for carbon pricing, together with other policies, to drive the sustainable growth and poverty reduction which can deliver on the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Among the report’s findings: Meeting objectives set out in the Paris Agreement will require all countries to implement policies that complement carbon pricing and address market and government failures—policies promoting renewable-based power generation, high efficiency standards, relevant R&D investment, and financial devices that lower the risk-weighted capital costs of low-carbon technologies. Although carbon taxes can raise revenues that can be used to increase green growth, low-income countries might need to start pricing carbon at low and gradually increasing levels to protect people particularly vulnerable to initial price increases.

The report explicitly acknowledges that challenge, suggesting that “The revenue can be used to foster growth in an equitable way, by returning the revenue as household rebates, supporting poorer sections of the population, managing transitional changes, investing in low-carbon infrastructure, and fostering technological change.”

The report highlights the difference between a carbon tax and an emissions trading system (ETS), which in the European Union has resulted in few, if any, carbon emissions reductions due to a far-too-high emissions cap, resulting in an oversupply of emissions permits that have kept carbon prices low. A carbon tax is administratively far less complex than an ETS. Although any particular carbon tax level could result in a higher- or lower-than-desired emissions reductions, it can be adjusted to achieve desired reductions, especially if it levied in an administratively efficient way, which in the energy sector would involve an “upstream” levy on bulk coal, oil, or gas.

Study Refutes EPA Head’s Claim of a “Leveling Off” of Global Warming

A new study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports directly refutes the claim made by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during his Senate confirmation hearing that satellite data show a “leveling off” of global warming.

“Mr. Pruitt claimed that ‘over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.’ We test this claim here,” wrote Benjamin Santer and three of his Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory colleagues, along with scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington in Seattle, and science research company Remote Sensing Systems.

After comparing all possible 20-year periods of satellite records to larger trends in the climate system, the paper concludes Pruitt was wrong (subscription). It also points to multiple peer-reviewed studies that have undercut the theory of a “pause” in global warming between 1998 and 2012 and that have shown increased evidence of a “human fingerprint” on climate.

“In my opinion, when incorrect science is elevated to the level of formal congressional testimony and makes its way into the official congressional record, climate scientists have some responsibility to test specific claims that were made, determine whether those claims are correct or not, and publish their results,” Santer told the Washington Post.

He emphasized the importance of continuing scientific research into climate change, telling ThinkProgress that the budget that covers the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where his work is housed, faces a proposed 70 percent cut in the budget released last week by the White House.

May 25, 2017

Trump’s Detailed Budget Proposal Calls for Deep Cuts in Energy, Environment Programs

On Tuesday the Trump administration released its proposed fiscal 2018 budget, which detailed deep cuts to energy and environmental programs—cuts telegraphed by the White House’s budget outline in March. The reductions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy and Interior departments were defended by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as necessary to boost Pentagon accounts and leave Social Security untouched at hearings with the House and Senate Budget committees yesterday and today, respectively.

In broad strokes, the budget calls for a 31 percent cut for the EPA, an 11 percent cut for the Interior Department, and an almost 6 percent cut for the Energy Department.

The EPA cuts, outlined in budget documents obtained on Monday by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, include zeroing out of some programs and significantly reduced funding for research into climate change. Some of the EPA cuts would

Reduce science and technology funding by nearly 40 percent to $450 million.
Cut grants to states for their own air and other environmental protections from $3.6 billion to $2.9 billion.
Remove all $19 million in aid for Alaskan native villages under threat from warming temperatures and rising sea levels.
Scrap the $8 million used to fund the greenhouse gas reporting program, which lists carbon emissions from industrial facilities.

“During the previous administration the pendulum went too far to one side where we were spending too much of your money on climate change and not very efficiently. We don’t get rid of it here. Do we target it? Sure. Do a lot of the EPA reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes. Does it mean we are anti-science? Absolutely not,” Mulvaney said on Tuesday.

At the Energy Department, the Trump administration would slash funding for clean energy programs, power grid operations and next-generation energy technologies, reversing years of collaboration with the private sector and academia to advance clean energy transmission and reliability, smart grid research and development, and energy storage (subscription). Some of the Energy Department cuts would

Halve the budget of the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, which oversees efficiency standards for buildings and appliances, supports research in clean energy technologies, and provides the majority of funding for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Weatherization and state energy subprograms are targeted for elimination.
Gut cutting-edge technology, leaving just $20 million to close out the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and cutting fossil research and development funding by more than half—funding that supports research on carbon capture and sequestration and the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Decrease funding for the Office of Nuclear Energy by about a third.
Decrease funding for the Office of Science, which oversees the majority of the national energy labs, from $5.3 billion to $4.5 billion.

At the Interior Department, the Trump administration would significantly reduce new federal land acquisitions and revenue-sharing partnerships with states, but pursue new oil and drilling opportunities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge starting in 2022. One of the Interior Department cuts would repeal payments to counties that produce geothermal energy as an alternative heat and energy source.

The president’s proposed budget is likely to face considerable pushback from Congress. “Almost every president’s budget proposal that I know of is basically dead on arrival,” Senator John Cornyn told CNN just hours before the budget release.

Court Suspends Litigation on Methane Leaks Rule

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the foreseeable future paused litigation over the Obama administration’s curbs on methane—a short-lived greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide—for new oil and gas operations. The court granted the Trump administration’s request to hold the litigation in abeyance (subscription) in the wake of a March “energy independence” executive order, which required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the new source methane standards, along with other Obama administration actions to address climate change.

The ruling came a week after the U.S. Senate rejected a resolution to repeal a 2016 Bureau of Land Management methane rule, which limits venting, flaring, and equipment leaks at more than 100,000 oil and gas wells on public and tribal lands across the West.

In light of the Senate’s failure to kill that rule, the American Petroleum Institute (API) last week asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to postpone compliance with it (subscription). In a letter to Zinke, API urged that compliance dates for the methane and waste prevention rule be pushed off for two years. Industry and states are challenging the rule in court, and the Trump administration has promised to review it (subscription).

Study: Sea-level Rise Not Just Under Way—It’s Accelerating

The pace of sea level rise has nearly tripled since 1990, due largely to an acceleration in the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, according to a new study, which detected a larger rate of increase than previous studies by taking a new approach to handling of pre-satellite data. Overall, the new reconstruction of sea-level rise is similar to that of other researchers except for the reconstruction during the early 1900s, when it shows ocean levels rising at a slower pace. Consequently, it shows a faster acceleration of sea-level rise over recent decades.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that before 1990, oceans were rising at about 1.1 millimeters per year, or just 0.43 inches per decade. But from 1993 through 2012, it finds that they rose at 3.1 millimeters per year, or 1.22 inches per decade.

Last week, a group of scientists, including three working for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), published a paper that highlighted the link between sea-level rise and global climate change, arguing that studies may have underestimated coastal flooding risks. The Washington Post reported that the Department of Interior, which houses the USGS, angered some of the authors by removing this line from the news release on the study: “Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.” According to co-author Chip Fletcher of the University of Hawaii, the deletion didn’t make the release wrong—but it did make it incomplete. “It did not cause any direct inaccuracy,” said Fletcher, “but it did eliminate an important connection to be made by the reader—that global warming is causing sea-level rise.”

May 18, 2017

China, India on Course to Surpass Climate Pledges, Making Up for U.S. Climate Action Rollbacks

Slowing coal use in China and India has put the two most populous countries on a trajectory to beat their carbon emissions goals under the Paris Agreement, making up for rollbacks in U.S. climate action under the Trump administration, according to a new analysis released by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) at intersessional climate talks concluding today in Bonn, Germany.

China, which had pledged to peak its carbon emissions no later than 2030 and to sharply reduce them thereafter, has seen a coal consumption decrease over three consecutive years (2013 to 2016), a trend expected to continue. India, which had pledged to slow its emissions growth by expanding its renewables sector, has stated that its planned coal-fired power plants may not be needed. If it fully implements recently announced policies, its emissions growth would significantly slow over the next decade.

“Five years ago, the idea of either China or India stopping—or even slowing—coal use was considered an insurmountable hurdle, as coal-fired power plants were thought by many to be necessary to satisfy the energy demands of these countries,” said Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, a CAT consortium member. “Recent observations show they are now on the way towards overcoming this challenge.”

So much so that they will compensate for the anticipated failure of the United States to make good on its pledge. Together, India and China will reduce projected global carbon emissions growth by 2 to 3 gigatons in 2030 compared to last year’s CAT projections—significantly outweighing the impact of the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks in U.S. emissions reduction efforts, which the CAT analysis calculated at some 0.4 gigatons of extra carbon emissions each year by 2030.

“The highly adverse rollbacks of US climate policies by the Trump Administration, if fully implemented and not compensated by other actors, are projected to flatten US emissions instead of continuing on a downward trend,” said Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute, a CAT consortium member.

According to the CAT analysis, meeting the U.S. pledge to lower its carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent below its 2005 levels by 2025 would require implementation of the full climate action plan outlined by the Obama administration—which along with the Clean Power Plan called for expanding clean energy, energy efficiency programs and advanced transportation technology. But even then, the analysis suggests, the United States would reduce emissions only 10 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Without the Clean Power Plan, emissions would fall just 7 percent below 2005 levels.

Clean Power Plan: EPA, Rule Foes Seek Abeyance; Rule Supporters, a Remand

Following last month’s Court of Appeals ruling that put lawsuits challenging the Clean Power Plan on hold for 60 days without deciding on the rule’s legality, the Trump administration on Monday asked the court to make that hold indefinite rather than remand the litigation—send it back—to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) while it decides what to do with the rule. A remand would end a halt that the Supreme Court placed on the rule last year, allowing supporters to file a new lawsuit if the EPA repeals the Clean Power Plan, which under a March executive order, it is almost certain to do.

“Abeyance is the proper course of action because it would better preserve the status quo [the Supreme Court’s stay of the rule], conserve judicial resources, and allow the new Administration to focus squarely on completing its current review of the Clean Power Plan (‘the Rule’) as expeditiously as possible,” said the EPA brief. “Whereas abeyance would maintain the Supreme Court’s stay, a remand would raise substantial questions regarding the stay’s vitality,” it continued.

Foes of the rule also argued in favor of an indefinite hold on the litigation, writing in their own brief that “holding these cases in abeyance best protects Petitioners’ rights to judicial review and this Court’s ability to resolve challenges to the Rule should EPA ultimately not revise or rescind the Rule.”

Environmentalists, states, cities and power companies that support the Clean Power Plan, along with wind and solar industry associations, all filed briefs in favor of remand.

Environmental groups said placing the cases in long-term abeyance would violate basic administrative law principles—a point also made by cities and power companies that support the Clean Power Plan—and that remanding the cases would avoid an improper extension of the Supreme Court stay. In addition, they argued that the courts should rule on the merits of the lawsuits.

“While remand is preferable to abeyance,” states their brief, “the only appropriate path is to issue a merits decision. Withholding a merits decision now would waste massive resources that the agency, the public, the parties and the Court have invested, and would very likely introduce sprawling new chapters to the long history of delay in curtailing the grave health and environmental consequences of power plant carbon pollution.”

Renewable energy trade groups said sending the cases back to the EPA would ensure that the agency goes through “reasoned decisionmaking.”

Even though the Clean Power Plan is unlikely to survive in its current form, on Monday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued a directive to state air regulators to write a plan to cap power plant emissions and to allow companies to swap allowances “through a multistate trading program,” much like the Clean Power Plan.

“The threat of climate change is real, and we have a shared responsibility to confront it,” McAuliffe said. “As the federal government abdicates its role on this important issue, it is critical for states to fill the void.”

The order seems to lean toward linking to or joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state cap-and-trade system for power generators in the Northeast.

Arctic Council Declaration Stops Short of Reaffirming Signatories’ Paris Agreement Pledges

Last week the eight member nations of the Arctic Council released a consensus declaration that included references to climate change but merely acknowledged the existence of the Paris Agreement rather than reaffirming members’ commitment to it—a concession sought by the U.S. delegation (subscription).

At the two-day ministerial meeting in Fairbanks, which concluded the council’s U.S. chairmanship, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reflected the Trump administration’s uncertain Paris Agreement stance, telling fellow council members that “In the United States we are currently reviewing several important policies, including how the Trump administration will approach the issue of climate change,” and adding that “We’re not going to rush to make a decision. We’re going to work to make the right decision for the United States.”

The joint agreement by the Arctic Council did not recommit its members to meet their pledges to the 2015 global accord to limit global warming increases.

In its preamble, the so-called Fairbanks Declaration merely noted “the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change and its implementation” and reiterated “the need for global action to reduce both long-lived greenhouse gases and short-lived climate pollutants.”

The U.S. State Department said the statement should not be construed to require U.S. action.

“The Fairbanks Declaration notes what Paris claims to be,” said a State Department official. “It does not obligate the U.S. to enforce it.”

The declaration referenced the Arctic’s fast-rising temperatures and their threat to the region, noting that “The Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the global average” and calling climate change “the most serious threat to Arctic biodiversity.”

December 1, 2016

Report: Climate Change’s Transformation of Arctic Has Cascading Effects

Climate-change-related environmental, ecological, and social changes in the Arctic are accelerating and are more extreme than ever recorded, undermining the sustainability of current ways of life in the region and potentially destabilizing climate and ecosystems around the world, according to a five-year report released last week by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization formed to protect the region.

“Arctic social and biophysical systems are deeply intertwined with our planet’s social and biophysical systems, so rapid, dramatic and unexpected changes in this sensitive region are likely to be felt elsewhere,” the report states. “As we are often reminded, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.”

The report noted that the Greenland Ice Sheet, which was thought to be resistant to climate change, is experiencing higher-than-expected thinning “over time scales of only years” due to warmer temperatures caused by climate change and that if it melts completely, global sea levels would rise an average of 7.4 meters.

The report outlines 19 “regime shifts” under way or on the horizon absent efforts to halt them. They range from sea-ice-free summers to ocean circulation changes and collapse of some Arctic fisheries.

“The warning signals are getting louder,” said Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the co-authors of the report. “[These developments] also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger.”

Trump Transition: EPA Prospects

Just days after stating his “open mind” to confronting climate change, president-elect Donald Trump was meeting with potential prospects to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would align with his campaign promises to roll back agency regulations.

Two rumored EPA leaders who have called for a significant rollback in regulations—Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and former Texas environmental regulator Kathleen Hartnett White—were scheduled to meet with Trump this week.

In an interview with McClatchy, White confirmed her consideration for the post, which she says she would take on with a new approach to address a “shifting environmental landscape.” White also shared details of her conversation with Trump.

“He wants the EPA to run more carefully, to use stronger science and be unabashedly conscientious to the effect of more and more rules on existing employment and job creation,” she said. “I have no desire to put words in his mouth. But as he is in other areas, he likes a good deal.”

Climate Change Conference in Marrakech Concludes

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22), which brought nearly 200 countries together to hammer out the details of last year’s Paris Agreement, concluded last month. What exactly came out of the two-week conference?

A timeline for implementing the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold the global average temperature increase to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Countries participating in COP22 decided to complete detail setting for the agreement by 2018 and to review progress in 2017.
The Marrakech Action Proclamation. The one-page document reaffirms countries’ commitments to the Paris Agreement’s goals following the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president. On the campaign trail, Trump stated intentions to end U.S. involvement in the agreement.
Forty-eight of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries pledged to turn in more ambitious targets to Paris before 2020 and to shift to 100 percent renewable energy use by 2050.
An agreement to continue the discussion on climate finance. There’s still uncertainty surroundingthe pathway to mobilizing $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, to establishing rules for reporting finance, and to scaling up adaptation finance.
Nations also agreed on a five-year work-plan on “loss and damage” to address issues beyond climate adaptation like slow-onset impacts of climate change, non-economic losses and migration.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

November 17, 2016

John Kerry Discusses Election, Paris Agreement at COP22

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate next week, Thursday, November 24, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. It will return Thursday, December 1.

A speech by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during the second week of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) focused, in part, on president-elect Donald Trump and his views on climate change. He tried to dispel doubts about the new U.S. government’s policies, saying it is a little bit “different when you’re actually in office compared to when you’re on the campaign trail.”

“The president-elect is going to have to make his decision,” said Kerry of Trump, who vowed while campaigning to withdraw the United States from the global Paris Agreement now under negotiation at COP22. “What I will do is speak to the assembly about our efforts and what we’re engaged in and why we’re engaged in it, and our deep commitment as the American people to this effort.”

He noted that the United States “is on our way to meeting all of our climate commitments,” and that the primary driver of emissions reduction is marketplace forces. “Investing in clean energy simply makes economic sense … [clean energy] is a multi-trillion dollar market, the largest the world has ever known.”

But he also acknowledged that even though the Paris Agreement came into force Nov. 4, there is no guarantee that its critical goals—holding the global average temperature increase to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—will be met. He noted that, although government leadership will be essential, governments alone won’t solve the climate crisis and that private industry is more important than ever.

“And if we fall short, it will be the greatest instance in modern history of a generation in a time of crisis, abdicating responsibility for the future,” Kerry said. “And it won’t just be a policy failure; because of the nature of this challenge, it will be a moral failure, a betrayal of devastating consequence.”

CO₂ Emissions from Fossil Fuels, Industry Flattening

A new study suggests that for the third consecutive year carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry have risen negligibly amid global economic growth, a slowdown driven by China. According to the study released at United Nations talks on climate change in Marrakesh, Morocco, and published in the journal Earth System Science Data, these emissions will grow by just 0.2 percent overall this year but will continue to rise in emerging economies.

“2016 we estimate to be flat again,” said Glen Peters, one of the contributors to the research and a scientist at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo in Norway. “It’s definitely three years, it’s fairly flat, which is quite a contrast to a decade ago, when it was growing at about 3 percent. It’s really leveled out the last few years.”

The decrease in Chinese emissions is particularly significant because China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, accounting for some 30 percent of the world’s annual global emissions, though whether that decrease is due mainly to economic troubles or to environmental efforts is uncertain.

Like Chinese emissions, U.S. emissions have also fallen, a downward trend that began in 2007. According to the study, they were down 2.5 percent in 2015 and are projected to drop 1.7 percent this year due to lowered demand for coal.

Nevertheless, the leveling off falls short of the reductions called for in the Paris Agreement, implementation details of which are being hammered out during the second week of the U.N.’s COP22 in Marrakech.

“The break in emissions rise is a great help for tackling climate change but it is not enough,” said Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre at University of East Anglia and primary study author. “Global emissions now need to decrease rapidly, not just stop growing. If climate negotiators in Marrakech can leverage ambitions for further cuts in emissions, we could be making a serious start to addressing climate change.”

According to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report, implementing current international pledges will slow the projected rise in carbon emissions from 650 million tons per year in 2000 to 150 million tons in 2040 but put the world far off the Paris Agreement goals.

“While this (reduction) is a significant achievement, it is far from enough to avoid the worst impact of climate change as it would only limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2.7 (degrees Celsius) by 2100,” said the IEA.

Study Says Climate Change is Altering Earth’s Ecological Systems

A new study in the journal Science suggests that climate change is already having an impact on 82 percent of global ecological systems—affecting everything from genes to entire ecosystems. This impact could increase disease outbreaks and threaten food security.

“There is now clear evidence that, with only a ~1 degree C of warming globally, very major impacts are already being felt,” said co-author Brett Scheffers of the University of Florida. “Genes are changing, species’ physiology and physical features such as body size are changing, species are rapidly moving to keep track of suitable climate space, and there are now signs of entire ecosystems under stress.”

The study also indicates that the adaptive capacity in wildlife could be used applied to crops, livestock and fisheries.

“The level of change we have observed is quite astonishing considering we have only experienced a relatively small amount of climate change to date,” said study co-author James Watson from the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Queensland. “It is no longer sensible to consider this a concern for the future. Policy makers and politicians must accept that if we don’t curb greenhouse gas emissions, an environmental catastrophe is likely.”

This study comes as nations discuss the Paris Agreement and the need to plan for its implementation.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.