COP21 Paris

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this includes action after the confcapt bak 420 html Industrialisedsee Bonn

=The 2015 Paris Agreement is much more explicit, seeking to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of the century and limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. [but no enforceable targets?]  some countries actually hit goals b/c of  covid?]Brulle says dark $ climbed steadily but peaked in 2012?wsj and forbes harp on kerry and binding targets?<a href="https://time.com/4142465/john-kerry-cop-21-climate-talks/">https://time.com/4142465/john-kerry-cop-21-climate-talks/</a>no lnx vid
The U.S. Doubles Down on Climate Financing and Ambition at ParisBY JUSTIN WORLAND / PARIS  DECEMBER 9, 2015 The United States will commit more than $800 million a year to financing climate adaptation efforts in developing countries, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Wednesday. Kerry, speaking at the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, also said the U.S. will join a coalition pushing for the most ambitious agreement.Wednesday’s announcement represents a doubling of last year’s U.S. commitment to fund adaptation efforts and comes as negotiators in Paris continue to wrangle over how an agreement should deal with finance. Developed countries pledged in 2009 to send $100 billion annually to developing countries to support their climate change initiatives, but the details about how such a large figure would be achieved have remained unclear. The U.S. move was intended to provide some assurance for developing countries that such a figure would be reached.“The U.S. not only recognizes our role in creating this problem but doing something about it,” said Kerry, reiterating a statement made by President Obama last week. “The situation demands and this moment demands that we do not leave Paris without an ambitious…and durable agreement.”Read More: What to Know About the Paris Climate Change Conference
The U.S. had previously committed $3 billion to a United Nations fund to finance climate efforts in the developing world (a down payment of sorts showing commitment to future funding), though Republicans in Congress have vowed to block the money. The new commitment specifically funds efforts by developing countries to adapt their infrastructure, agriculture and health services to a warming climate—areas that countries often find more difficult to finance than programs that support renewable energy efforts. (Supporting adaptation tends to be costly—think higher sea walls and tougher bridges—while investing in renewable energy can be profitable).Finance has been key sticking point as developing countries demand assurances that they will receive support from their developed counterparts when it comes to addressing climate change. Research from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that climate financing increased by $10 billion in 2014 to $62 billion. That’s a significant jump but far short of the $100 billion promise. Negotiators from developing countries want to know that money will actually flow their way, and in a manner they can easily access, before signing off a deal.Kerry also formally announced that the U.S. would join a “high ambition” coalition at the negotiations that includes the European Union and other countries. That group will push for an ambitious, lower ceiling for temperature rise, a strong mechanism of ensuring transparency in what countries pledge to do about climate change and a system by which countries improve upon their commitments every five years. Notably absent from the group are India and China, who fear that an overly ambitious deal might stymie their economic growth. “We didn’t come to Paris to build a ceiling,” Kerry said in his announcement. “We came to build a floor.”The speech, which comes as the Paris climate talks enter their final and most critical days, drew immediate praise from observers who say the address will provide momentum on key issues, particularly finance. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is overseeing proceedings, cited the issue as one of three remaining areas of contention in remarks on Wednesday shortly after Kerry’s speech.Read More: How the U.S. Became an Unlikely Hero at the Paris Climate SummitKerry said in his speech that he remained optimistic that this conference, formally known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) would put the world on a pathway to dealing with climate change.“We are seeing momentum for an agreement that has never existed,” he said. “This COP may be the best course we have to correct the course of our planet.”=<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know">https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know</a>february 19, 2021<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/melissa-denchak-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;">Melissa Denchak</a> <section class="entity entity-paragraphs-item paragraphs-item-smc-textarea slice slice-textarea blue-link slice--containerwrap-w656 containerwrap containerwrapw656 clearfix" about="" typeof="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; overflow: hidden; clear: both; margin-bottom: 70px; position: relative; max-width: 656px !important;"><div class="body-content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><h5 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.25em; margin: 10px 0px;">Jump to Section</h5><ul style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 40px 20px; padding: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-whatis" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">What Is the Paris Agreement?</a></li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-summary" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Paris Agreement Summary</a></li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-important" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Why Is the Paris Agreement Important?</a></li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-costs" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">What Are the Paris Agreement’s Costs?</a></li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-agreements" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">International Agreements on Climate Change</a></li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; list-style: none; line-height: 1.68em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 16px;"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know#sec-beyond" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Beyond Paris</a></li></ul>“A world that is safer and more secure, more prosperous, and more free.” In December 2015, that was the world then-president Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/12/statement-president-paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">envisioned</a> we would leave today’s children when he announced that the United States, along with nearly 200 other countries, had committed to the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/paris-agreement-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Paris Climate Agreement</a>, an ambitious global action plan to fight climate change.But less than two years later, then-president Donald Trump put that future in jeopardy by<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/trump-recklessly-pulls-us-out-paris-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;"> announcing his plan to withdraw</a> the United States from the accord—a step that became official on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/climate/paris-climate-agreement-trump.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">November 4, 2020</a>—as part of a <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/trump-watch" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">larger effort</a> to dismantle decades of U.S. environmental policy. Fortunately, American voters also got their say in November 2020, ousting Trump and sending <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/nrdc/joe-biden-and-kamala-harriss-election-win-comes-sigh-relief-and-call-action" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Joe Biden and Kamala Harris</a> to the White House.Following President Biden’s <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jake-schmidt/america-back-international-climate-effort" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">day one executive order</a>, the United States officially rejoined the landmark Paris Agreement on February 19, 2021, positioning the country to once again be part of the global climate solution. Meanwhile, city, state, business, and civic leaders across the country and around the world have been <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/global-climate-action-summit" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">ramping up efforts</a> to drive the clean energy advances needed to meet the goals of the agreement and put the brakes on dangerous climate change.Here’s a look at what the Paris Agreement does, how it works, and why it’s so critical to our future....Since 2015, <a href="https://unfccc.int/process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">197</a><a href="https://unfccc.int/process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;"> countries</a>—nearly every nation on earth, with the last signatory being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/climate/syria-joins-paris-agreement.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">war-torn Syria</a>—have endorsed the Paris Agreement. Of those, 190 have solidified their support with <a href="https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=en" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">formal </a><a href="https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=en" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">approval</a>. The major emitting countries that have yet to formally join the agreement are <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/08/13/countries-yet-ratify-paris-agreement/" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Iran, Turkey, and </a><a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/08/13/countries-yet-ratify-paris-agreement/" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Iraq</a>....limit global temperature rise by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.In an effort to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change,” the accord calls for limiting the global average temperature rise in this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. It also asks countries to work to achieve a leveling off of global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to become greenhouse gas emissions neutral in the second half of this century. In 2018, the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">IPCC’s Special Report: Global Warming at 1.5 Degrees Celsius</a> concluded the difference <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ipcc-climate-change-report-why-it-matters-everyone-planet" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius</a> could mean substantially more poverty, extreme heat, sea level rise, habitat loss, and drought.To achieve the Paris Agreement’s original objectives, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jake-schmidt/paris-climate-agreement-explained-whats-it-and-where-it-taking-us" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">186 countries</a>—responsible for more than 90 percent of global emissions—submitted carbon reduction targets, known as “<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/indc-acronym-standing-between-us-and-disaster" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">intended nationally determined contributions</a>” (INDCs), prior to the Paris conference. These targets outlined each country’s commitments for curbing emissions (including through the preservation of <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/stop-clearcutting-carbon-sinks" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">carbon sinks</a>) through 2025 or 2030, including economy-wide carbon-cutting goals.INDCs turn into <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/han-chen/implementing-paris-agreement-first-year-progress-report" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">NDCs</a>—nationally determined contributions—once a country formally joins the agreement. There are no specific requirements about how or how much countries should cut emissions, but there have been political expectations about the type and stringency of targets by various countries based on the latest science. As a result, national plans vary greatly in scope and ambition, largely reflecting each country’s capabilities, its level of development, and its contribution to emissions over time. <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jake-schmidt/china-outlines-additional-steps-climate-action" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">China</a>, for example, committed to leveling off its carbon emissions no later than 2030. <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/anjali-jaiswal/2020-road-paris-climate-ambition-not-canceled" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">India</a> set its sights on cutting emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent below 2005 levels and generating 40 percent of its electricity from non–fossil fuel sources by 2030.The United States—the world’s largest historical emitter and the second-biggest current emitter after China—had <a href="https://assets.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/paris-climate-agreement-progress-2017-us-ib.pdf?ga=2.155778171.1359834769.1533562023-1072497604.1462979213" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">committed</a> to cutting overall greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. U.S. initiatives to achieve the target include the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/save-clean-power-plan" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Clean Power Plan</a> (a state-by-state program to cut carbon pollution from the power sector) and the tightening of <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/luke-tonachel/trump-cars-rollback-unjustified-unprecedented-and-dangerous" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">automotive fuel economy standards</a> to reduce transportation emissions—both policies the Trump administration fought hard to roll back and which the Biden/Harris administration has committed to strengthening....<h4 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.1em; margin: 20px 0px 5px; font-weight: 400;">Provide a framework for transparency, accountability, and the achievement of more ambitious targets.</h4>The Paris Agreement includes a series of <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/paris-climate-agreement-IB.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">mandatory measures</a> for the monitoring, verification, and public reporting of progress toward a country’s emissions-reduction targets. The enhanced transparency rules apply common frameworks for all countries, with accommodations and support provided for nations that currently lack the capacity to strengthen their systems.Among other requirements, countries must report their greenhouse gas inventories and progress relative to their targets, allowing outside experts to evaluate their success. Countries are also expected to revisit their pledges and put forward progressively stronger targets every five years, with the goal of further driving down emissions. Nations must participate in a “<a href="https://unfccc.int/topics/science/workstreams/global-stocktake-referred-to-in-article-14-of-the-paris-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">global stocktake</a>” to measure collective efforts toward meeting the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals as well. Meanwhile, developed countries also have to estimate how much <a href="https://unfccc.int/topics/climate-finance/the-big-picture/climate-finance-in-the-negotiations" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">financial assistance</a> they’ll allocate to developing nations to help them reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.These transparency and accountability provisions are similar to those in the frameworks of other international agreements. While the system doesn’t include financial penalties, the requirements are aimed at making the progress of individual nations easy to track and fostering a sense of global peer pressure, discouraging any dragging of feet among countries that may consider doing so.<h4 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.1em; margin: 20px 0px 5px; font-weight: 400;">Mobilize support for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing nations.</h4>Recognizing that many developing countries and small island nations that have contributed the least to climate change could <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/climate-injustice" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">suffer the most</a> from its consequences, the Paris Agreement includes a plan for developed countries—and others “in a position to do so”—to continue to provide financial resources to help developing countries mitigate and increase resilience to climate change. For instance, India’s pledge includes the need to eradicate poverty in parallel with decreasing emissions and increasing renewable energy, such as <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/anjali-jaiswal/2020-road-paris-climate-ambition-not-canceled" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">addressing energy poverty</a> and access in remote villages that rely on diesel generators. With technological and financial help from wealthier countries, important equity-focused goals such as these can be within reach. The Paris Agreement builds on the financial commitments of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which aimed to scale up public and private climate finance for developing nations to $100 billion a year by 2020. The Copenhagen pact also created the <a href="https://www.greenclimate.fund/home" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Green Climate Fund</a> to help mobilize transformational private finance using targeted public dollars. The Paris Agreement established the expectation that the world would set a higher annual goal by 2025 to build on the $100 billion target for 2020 and would put mechanisms in place to achieve that scaling up. Unfortunately, collective <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-06/rich-countries-are-missing-the-100-billion-climate-finance-goal" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">contributions continue to fall short</a>, reaching approximately $79 billion in 2019.While developed nations are not legally bound to contribute a specific amount to the mitigation and adaptation efforts of developing countries, they are encouraged to provide financial support and are required to report on the financing they supply or will mobilize....<h3 id="sec-costs" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">What Are the Paris Agreement's Costs?</h3>There’s a <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-talk-paris-accord-skeptic" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">lot of misinformation</a> out there about the Paris Agreement, including the idea that it will hurt the U.S. economy. That was among a number of <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/non-alternative-facts-about-paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">unfounded claims</a> former president Trump repeated, arguing that the accord would cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion by 2040 and $2.7 million jobs by 2025, making us less competitive against China and India. But as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/us/politics/fact-check-climate-change-trump.html?WT.nav=top-news&action=click&clickSource=story-heading&emc=edit_nn_20170602&hp=&module=b-lede-package-region&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=60851521&pgtype=Homepage&regi" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">fact checkers</a> noted, these statistics originated from a <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/chamber-inflates-costs-ignores-benefits-climate-action" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">debunked March 2017 study</a> that exaggerated the future costs of emissions reductions, underestimated advances in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and outright ignored the huge health and economic costs of climate change itself.Climate change is already costing public health. <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/vijay-limaye/climate-change-public-health-emergency-inaction-costing-us" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Research from NRDC scientists</a> shows how inaction on climate change is responsible for many billions in health costs each year in just the United States—as communities around the world experience greater displacement, illness, famine, water shortages, civil strife, and death.Research makes clear that the cost of climate inaction far outweighs the cost of reducing carbon pollution. One <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-climate-policies-cost-us-economy-6-trillion-new-study-575120a5870a/" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">2018 study</a> suggests that if the United States failed to meet its Paris climate goals, it could cost the economy as much as $6 trillion in the coming decades. A worldwide failure to meet the NDCs currently laid out in the agreement could reduce global GDP <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0071-9.epdf?referrer_access_token=SuhzqbWxTz1OoxRRTMPlQtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OskypFEzLGji1pAcPpJpRUDDQraVc1GUbSttWiyoT8BjjCIHkomS6llWooeXnRA23M32PouG8Kqr7Zzf-KNT6rtb3YaD04_bYBkVQh0nPISrMSFvneLBSlKEZNxSL7Da" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">more than 25 percent</a> by century’s end. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/brendan-guy/paris-climate-agreements-19-trillion-economic-prize" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">another study</a> estimates that meeting—or even exceeding—the Paris goals via infrastructure investments in both clean energy and energy efficiency could have major global rewards—to the tune of some $19 trillion.In terms of employment, the clean energy sector employed <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lara-ettenson/good-news-good-jobs-clean-energy-outpaces-fossil-fuels" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">more than 3 million Americans</a> before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—about 14 times the number of coal, gas, oil, and other fossil fuel industry workers—and has the potential to employ many more with further investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric grid modernization to replace the aging coal-powered infrastructure. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/non-alternative-facts-about-paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">coal jobs</a> aren’t so much being transferred “out of America” as they are falling victim to market forces as renewable and natural gas prices decline. But supporting policies that promote <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-just-transition-looks" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">an equitable transition</a>—with community-led decision-making, a focus on equity, and retraining support—is an important means to helping communities leave the dirty energy economy behind them.Finally, rather than giving China and India a pass to pollute, as Trump <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/non-alternative-facts-about-paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">claimed</a>, the pact represents the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-talk-paris-accord-skeptic" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">first time</a> those two major developing economies have agreed to concrete and time-bound climate commitments. Both countries, which are already <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jake-schmidt/trump-cant-stop-china-india-and-mexico-make-strides" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">poised to lead the world</a> in renewable energy, have <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jake-schmidt/rising-challenge-five-years-after-paris-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">made significant progress</a> to meet their Paris goals.</div></section>=see nrdc~ above]franta says same pts and economists used to ~ kyoto NERAStatement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT  Issued on: June 1, 2017...PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  I would like to begin by addressing the terrorist attack in Manila.  We’re closely monitoring the situation, and I will continue to give updates if anything happens during this period of time.  But it is really very sad as to what’s going on throughout the world with terror.  Our thoughts and our prayers are with all of those affected.Before we discuss the Paris Accord, I’d like to begin with an update on our tremendous — absolutely tremendous — economic progress since Election Day on November 8th.  The economy is starting to come back, and very, very rapidly.  We’ve added $3.3 trillion in stock market value to our economy, and more than a million private sector jobs.I have just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.  It was a very, very successful trip, believe me.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.In my meetings at the G7, we have taken historic steps to demand fair and reciprocal trade that gives Americans a level playing field against other nations.  We’re also working very hard for peace in the Middle East, and perhaps even peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Our attacks on terrorism are greatly stepped up — and you see that, you see it all over — from the previous administration, including getting many other countries to make major contributions to the fight against terror.  Big, big contributions are being made by countries that weren’t doing so much in the form of contribution.One by one, we are keeping the promises I made to the American people during my campaign for President –- whether it’s cutting job-killing regulations; appointing and confirming a tremendous Supreme Court justice; putting in place tough new ethics rules; achieving a record reduction in illegal immigration on our southern border; or bringing jobs, plants, and factories back into the United States at numbers which no one until this point thought even possible.  And believe me, we’ve just begun.  The fruits of our labor will be seen very shortly even more so.On these issues and so many more, we’re following through on our commitments.  And I don’t want anything to get in our way.  I am fighting every day for the great people of this country.  Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord — (applause) — thank you, thank you — but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.  So we’re getting out.  But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.  And if we can, that’s great.  And if we can’t, that’s fine.  (Applause.)As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens.  The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. [NO BINDING TARGRTS]  This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.[WHAT DID WE PLEDGE? ACTUALLY GIVE? VS G7?]Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates.  This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need — believe me, this is not what we need — including automobile jobs, and the further decimation of vital American industries on which countless communities rely.  They rely for so much, and we would be giving them so little.According to this same study, by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors:  paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal — and I happen to love the coal miners — down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent.  The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that.Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, it fails to live up to our environmental ideals.  As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States — which is what it does -– the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.[China india bs]For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13.  They can do whatever they want for 13 years.  Not us.  India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.  There are many other examples.  But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up.  We’re having a big opening in two weeks.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places.  A big opening of a brand-new mine.  It’s unheard of.  For many, many years, that hasn’t happened.  They asked me if I’d go.  I’m going to try. [wyo? 2017 https://blog.midwestind.com/wyoming-coal-mine/] carbon fibre? mellaurgical?] near a river]China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants.  So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.  India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.  Think of it:  India can double their coal production.  [imports?] We’re supposed to get rid of ours.  Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries.This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.  The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement — they went wild; they were so happy[like Muslims in NJ on 911] — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage.  A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound.  We would find it very hard to compete with other countries from other parts of the world.We have among the most abundant energy reserves on the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty.  Yet, under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation — it’s great wealth, it’s phenomenal wealth; not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth — and leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness.The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.  At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand, but at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country — (applause) — will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts, our businesses will come to a halt in many cases, and the American family will suffer the consequences in the form of lost jobs and a very diminished quality of life.Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.  Tiny, tiny amount.  In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning:  “The reality is that withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.”  The United States, under the Trump administration, will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth.  We’ll be the cleanest.  We’re going to have the cleanest air.  We’re going to have the cleanest water.  We will be environmentally friendly, but we’re not going to put our businesses out of work and we’re not going to lose our jobs.  We’re going to grow; we’re going to grow rapidly.  (Applause.)And I think you just read — it just came out minutes ago, the small business report — small businesses as of just now are booming, hiring people.  One of the best reports they’ve seen in many years.I’m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under the terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers.  (Applause.)So if the obstructionists want to get together with me, let’s make them non-obstructionists.  We will all sit down, and we will get back into the deal.  And we’ll make it good, and we won’t be closing up our factories, and we won’t be losing our jobs.  And we’ll sit down with the Democrats and all of the people that represent either the Paris Accord or something that we can do that’s much better than the Paris Accord.  And I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled.  But until we do that, we’re out of the agreement.I will work to ensure that America remains the world’s leader on environmental issues, [got rid of 135 epa regs, CPP] but under a framework that is fair and where the burdens and responsibilities are equally shared among the many nations all around the world.No responsible leader can put the workers — and the people — of their country at this debilitating and tremendous disadvantage.  The fact that the Paris deal hamstrings the United States, while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries, should dispel any doubt as to the real reason why foreign lobbyists wish to keep our magnificent country tied up and bound down by this agreement:  It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States.  That’s not going to happen while I’m President.  I’m sorry.  (Applause.)My job as President is to do everything within my power to give America a level playing field and to create the economic, regulatory and tax structures that make America the most prosperous and productive country on Earth, and with the highest standard of living and the highest standard of environmental protection.Our tax bill is moving along in Congress, and I believe it’s doing very well.  I think a lot of people will be very pleasantly surprised.  The Republicans are working very, very hard.  We’d love to have support from the Democrats, but we may have to go it alone.  But it’s going very well.The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense.  They don’t put America first.  I do, and I always will.  (Applause.)The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance.  You see what’s happening.  It’s pretty obvious to those that want to keep an open mind.At what point does America get demeaned?  At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?   We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers.  We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore.  And they won’t be.  They won’t be.I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.  (Applause.)  I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America’s interests.  Many trade deals will soon be under renegotiation.  Very rarely do we have a deal that works for this country, but they’ll soon be under renegotiation.  The process has begun from day one.  But now we’re down to business.Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments.  So we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else.  Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime.The Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion — nobody else is even close; most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism.  That’s where they came.  Believe me, they didn’t come from me.  They came just before I came into office.  Not good.  And not good the way they took the money.In 2015, the United Nation’s departing top climate officials reportedly described the $100 billion per year as “peanuts,” and stated that “the $100 billion is the tail that wags the dog.”  In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020.  And nobody even knows where the money is going to.  Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated.  America is $20 trillion in debt.  Cash-strapped cities cannot hire enough police officers or fix vital infrastructure.  Millions of our citizens are out of work.  And yet, under the Paris Accord, billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us.  So think of that.There are serious legal and constitutional issues as well.  Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, and across the world should not have more to say with respect to the U.S. economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives.  Thus, our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty.  (Applause.)  Our Constitution is unique among all the nations of the world, and it is my highest obligation and greatest honor to protect it.  And I will.[impeached twice, a record]Staying in the agreement could also pose serious obstacles for the United States as we begin the process of unlocking the restrictions on America’s abundant energy reserves, which we have started very strongly.  It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic economic affairs, but this is the new reality we face if we do not leave the agreement or if we do not negotiate a far better deal.The risks grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time.  In other words, the Paris framework is a starting point — as bad as it is — not an end point.  And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability.  Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in. [again no binding targets]As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people.  The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world.  It is time to exit the Paris Accord — (applause) — and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — along with many, many other locations within our great country — before Paris, France.  It is time to make America great again.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.Thank you very much.  Very important.  I’d like to ask Scott Pruitt, who most of you know and respect, as I do, just to say a few words.Scott, please.  (Applause.)ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT:  Thank you, Mr. President.  Your decision today to exit the Paris Accord reflects your unflinching commitment to put America first.And by exiting, you’re fulfilling yet one more campaign promise to the American people.  Please know that I am thankful for your fortitude, your courage, and your steadfastness as you serve and lead our country.America finally has a leader who answers only to the people — not to the special interests [coal, murray, ETP kelcy] who have had their way for way too long.  In everything you do, Mr. President, you’re fighting for the forgotten men and women across this country.  You’re a champion for the hardworking citizens all across this land who just want a government that listens to them and represents their interest.You have promised to put America First in all that you do, and you’ve done that in any number of ways — from trade, to national security, to protecting our border, to rightsizing Washington, D.C.  And today you’ve put America first with regard to international agreements and the environment.This is an historic restoration of American economic independence — one that will benefit the working class, the working poor, and working people of all stripes.  With this action, you have declared that the people are rulers of this country once again.  And it should be noted that we as a nation do it better than anyone in the world in striking the balance between growing our economy, growing jobs while also being a good steward of our environment.We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.  After all, before the Paris Accord was ever signed, America had reduced its CO2 footprint to levels from the early 1990s.  In fact, between the years 2000 and 2014, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 18-plus percent.  And this was accomplished not through government mandate, but accomplished through innovation and technology of the American private sector.For that reason, Mr. President, you have corrected a view that was paramount in Paris that somehow the United States should penalize its own economy, be apologetic, lead with our chin, while the rest of world does little.  Other nations talk a good game; we lead with action — not words.  (Applause.)Our efforts, Mr. President, as you know, should be on exporting our technology, our innovation to nations who seek to reduce their CO2 footprint to learn from us.  That should be our focus versus agreeing to unachievable targets that harm our economy and the American people.Mr. President, it takes courage, it takes commitment to say no to the plaudits of men while doing what’s right by the American people.  You have that courage, and the American people can take comfort because you have their backs.Thank you, Mr. President.END<div>=</div><div>US co2 down 2009 but great recession? shift from coal to lng? pruitt boast but he and trump tried all to increase co2?</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/2019-carbon-emissions-look-to-tick-upwards-again/">https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/2019-carbon-emissions-look-to-tick-upwards-again/</a></div><div>
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ctr-pt: to covid bailout bill as dis cap'l</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url css-listicle-body-2645724784" data-elid="2645724784" data-post-url="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html" data-authors="Jordan Davidson" data-headline="Addressing the Climate Crisis Strengthens Economies, New Research Finds" style="margin-top: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;">Every country around the world would see economic gains from combating the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">climate crisis</a> and trying to keep global heating within the bounds of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Paris agreement</a>, according to a new <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">study</a> published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Nature Communications</a>.<div class="rebellt-item col1" id="rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-reload-ads="false" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-basename="particle-1" data-post-id="2645724784">The straw man argument against taking action on the climate crisis is that the cost of limiting emissions and investing in green infrastructure is too steep and would cripple economies. It turns out, according to the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">research</a>, that the opposite is true.In fact, the study found that if nations around the world fail to curtail greenhouse gas emissions within the bounds of the Paris agreement, the global economy will lose anywhere from $150 trillion to nearly $800 trillion by the year 2100, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a> reported. The upper end of the range is if countries fail to meet their current commitments, which are inadequate to meet the Paris agreement as they are expected to lead to 3 degrees Celsius in warming.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" id="rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-reload-ads="true" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-basename="particle-2" data-post-id="2645724784" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The study's authors, from the Beijing Institute of Technology and other Chinese institutions, billed their findings as a self-preservation strategy for government, according to The Guardian. GUKThe researchers calculated the potential benefits of emissions reductions by looking at the social welfare aspects of cutting greenhouse gases and its affect on economic growth. They found that the benefits from cutting emissions would provide the largest boost to developing countries with large populations of poor and vulnerable people, who are most likely to be negatively affected by droughts, floods, fires, storms and food shortages, as The Guardian reported.While all countries would benefit in the long term, the most immediate benefits would go to developing countries with high emissions, such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria and China, according to The Guardian.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" id="rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-reload-ads="true" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-basename="particle-3" data-post-id="2645724784" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Paris agreement is composed of voluntary commitments known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, made by each country in the accord. The main aspect of the commitments is to reduce greenhouse emissions by cutting the burning of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">fossil fuels</a>, thus reducing global warming and the adverse impacts of warming. However, many countries are witnessing economic damage from the coronavirus lockdowns and are rethinking their commitment to their NDCs. Already, government bailouts for the fossil fuel industry and the airline industry are in the works, as well as a rollback of their carbon emission reductions, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a> reported."A number of studies have proved that current [NDCs] are not enough to achieve the global warming targets," said Biying Yu, from the Beijing Institute of Technology and a co-author of the study, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a> reported.The research shows that the choice between climate action and economic growth is in fact a false dichotomy. The authors' work concludes that countries could reach their climate goals and at the same time see an increase in their net income.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" id="rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-reload-ads="true" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-basename="particle-4" data-post-id="2645724784" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a>, Yu and her team calculated ideal strategies for countries to improve their NDCs, minimize economic losses and maximize gains. They found that if nations are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the net global economic benefit would range between $127 trillion and $616 trillion by the end of the century."Early and quick action will provide a better chance to close the widening emissions gap, even though a large amount of abatement cost would occur in the short term," said the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">study</a>."The literature overwhelmingly shows the economic benefits of serious mitigation efforts exceed the costs in the long run," said Noah Kaufman, a climate and energy economist from Columbia University, to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a>.However, Yu is concerned that governments will be short-sighted and balk at the upfront cost of investing in infrastructure to combat the climate crisis. She also sees that the climate emergency takes commitments from every country."Combating climate change is not a matter for one country. It requires collective action and cooperation from all countries around the world," Yu explained, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-action-economic-benefit-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">CBS News</a> reported. "Let's work together and save ourselves."  <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" line-height="line-height" border-radius="border-radius" border="border" solid="solid" rgb="rgb" padding="padding">climate crisis</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" line-height="line-height" border-radius="border-radius" border="border" solid="solid" rgb="rgb" padding="padding">paris agreement</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/greenhouse-gases" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" line-height="line-height" border-radius="border-radius" border="border" solid="solid" rgb="rgb" padding="padding">greenhouse gases</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" line-height="line-height" border-radius="border-radius" border="border" solid="solid" rgb="rgb" padding="padding">fossil fuels</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widget__headline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html" aria-label="Corporate Leaders to Trump: Withdrawing From the Paris Agreement Makes Bad Business Sense" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Corporate Leaders to Trump: Withdrawing From the Paris Agreement Makes Bad Business Sense</a></h1><div>
</div><div>12/19</div><div>ew</div><div> Trump says fulfilling the country's commitment to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Paris climate agreement</a> would be bad news for the U.S. economy, but the growing tally of business leaders pledging to take action anyway suggests otherwise. These businesspeople understand that while climate action costs money, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">climate change</a> costs far more.<a href="https://www.wearestillin.com/signatories" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">More than 2,200</a> businesses and investors have signed on to the "We Are Still In" pledge — even as Trump <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/week-146-trump-starts-paris-withdrawal-clock-and-nudges-doomsday-clock-forward" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">moves ever-closer</a> to official U.S. withdrawal. The group standing behind the 2015 climate deal represents a whopping <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/opinion/climate-change-walmart-paris.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">70 percent</a> of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), and thousands more have joined other corporate climate and sustainability programs, such as the <a href="https://www.wemeanbusinesscoalition.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">We</a><a href="https://www.wemeanbusinesscoalition.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;"> Mean Business coalition</a> and the <a href="https://www.wri.org/our-work/project/science-based-targets-initiative" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Science-Based Targets Initiatives</a>.<div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-1" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And while many corporations are still contending with their own outsize roles in creating the climate crisis (along with other environmental and social woes), many are already on their way to implementing the changes necessary to meet their carbon emissions targets.Tech superpower Apple, for instance, is now running all of its facilities in 43 countries on <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40554151/how-apple-got-to-100-renewable-energy-the-right-way" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">100 percent clean energy</a> — in some cases sending surplus energy from its solar farms back to the local grid. Apple is also securing commitments from its suppliers to switch to renewables. Over in the fashion industry, sneaker giant Nike has committed to diverting 99 percent of its footwear manufacturing waste from landfills, making certain products with recycled plastic bottles, and reducing carbon emissions across its global supply chain by <a href="https://sgbonline.com/nike-outlines-stance-on-tackling-climate-change/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">30 percent by 2030</a>.Such commitments multiply daily, even as the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/trump-v-earth" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Trump administration's rollbacks</a> of the most important federal climate policies continue try to steer America in a different direction: backwards. Here are just a few of the reasons companies are opting to move forward instead.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-2" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style=""><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center;">Bottom Lines</h3>Trump often says that the Paris Agreement "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">punishes</a>" the U.S., particularly its businesses, but he outright ignores the far more destructive economic force of climate change. According to a <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26167" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">recent study</a> from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a business-as-usual high-emissions scenario (like the one Trump touts) could result in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/19/climate-change-could-cost-us-up-percent-its-gdp-by-study-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">7.2 percent drop in GDP</a> per capita worldwide by the end of the century. Disruptions to global supply chains are <a href="https://epsnews.com/2018/02/01/resilinc-supply-chain-disruptions-nearly-doubled-2017/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">already upon us</a>, and as carbon pollution continues to collect in our atmosphere, more will come. <a href="https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/06/20/climate-change-economy-impacts/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Experts predict</a> far-reaching impacts to the infrastructure that supports nearly all businesses, such as extreme weather affecting the transportation of raw goods and rising sea levels swamping the fiber-optic cables essential to the internet.Of course, climate change will also jeopardize specific industries, such as winter sports (see: <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/year-without-snow" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">decreases in snowfall</a>), and products, like your morning cup of coffee. In fact, it's little wonder that Starbucks has also <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/06/05/trump-paris-climate-amazon-microsoft-starbucks.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">signed on</a> to We Are Still In. Climate change may bring increasingly irregular growing seasons (and skyrocketing prices) for <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17012019/coffee-climate-change-risk-wild-arabica-endanagered-kew-study" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">coffee beans</a> on top of increased sick days for field workers exposed to <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/too-hot-handle" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">extreme heat</a>. Such concerns would apply to almost any business dependent on either agriculture or a global workforce, or both. According to a <a href="http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/booklets/warming_world_final.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">2011 National Academy of Sciences</a> report, for every additional degree Celsius that the planet warms, we can expect a 5 to 15 percent reduction in total crop yield.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-3" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center;">Big Penance</h3>While many corporations have spewed more than their fair share of carbon pollution, several are now taking the opportunity to have a supersize impact on emissions reductions. Look at the world's two biggest retailers: Amazon and Walmart. Amazon says it will go carbon neutral by 2040, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/technology/amazon-carbon-neutral.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">10 years ahead</a> of the Paris goals, and recently made moves to start transitioning its <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-normal-car-factory-abandoned-gas-guzzlers-soon-be-buzzing-electric-vehicles" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">fleet of delivery trucks</a> to electric vehicles. Soon after Trump took office, Walmart announced its <a href="https://www.walmartsustainabilityhub.com/project-gigaton" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Project Gigaton</a> initiative, which set the ambitious goal of lowering the company's global carbon emissions — by pressing for action on the part of its suppliers — by one billion metric tons before 2030. Walmart has since reported that it's <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/walmart-inches-toward-audacious-project-gigaton-goal" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">on track to meet</a> its goal, which is no small feat: the entire U.S. emitted <a href="https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">6.5 billion metric tons</a> of carbon in 2017.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-4" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center;">Market Trends</h3>Climate action is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-false-choice-between-economic-growth-and-combatting-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">no longer seen as the enemy</a> of economic progress. While the <a href="https://www.e2.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/E2_CleanEnergyJobs_National.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">clean energy industry</a> has known this for a while, the notion is (finally) catching on in other corners of the economy — and most excitingly it's creating opportunities for market-disrupting innovation.Take electric vehicles (EVs). While Trump <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/trump-trying-stand-way-electric-cars-theyre-breezing-right-past-him" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">fights the auto industry's progress</a> in manufacturing cleaner cars and trucks, countries such as China are investing in zero-emission vehicle technology at warp speed. According to a <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/research/electric-vehicles" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">recent report by JP Morgan Research</a>, China is expected to account for <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/327143" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">nearly 60 percent</a> of all global EV sales by next year, and many Chinese businesses (the ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing, for example) are eager to profit while they help the world progress. The same goes for the folks behind other innovations — like <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/can-a-burger-help-solve-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">plant-based faux meats</a>, and energy-efficient fabrics <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78m7mz/this-taiwanese-company-makes-clothes-out-of-coffee-grounds" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">made from coffee grounds</a>, and <a href="https://reset.org/blog/compostable-bottle-every-use-veganbottle-11192017" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">petroleum-free plastics</a>, and delivery vans <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3068244/these-grocery-delivery-trucks-are-powered-by-food-waste" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">fueled by food waste</a> and ... you get the idea. A poll by the data firm Nielsen showed that <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/global-consumers-seek-companies-that-care-about-environmental-issues/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">81 percent</a> of consumers feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment. The sustainability economy is booming — and <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/friday-school-out-and-climate-strike" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">climate-conscious Gen Z'ers and millennials</a> are ready to buy accordingly.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-5" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/corporate-leaders-usa-paris-agreement-2641488286.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5" data-id="5" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem5" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center;">Consumer Trust</h3>At their best, corporate climate pledges open business practices up to public accountability and mark a first step toward real-life emissions cuts. At their worst, they provide a greenwashed shield behind which polluting companies can hide their status quo behaviors. Procter & Gamble, for one, boasts about the forest-friendly sourcing and certifications of its Charmin toilet paper (the company has no climate pledges to speak of). But in practice, P&G has been <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/shelley-vinyard/unrolling-charmins-sustainability-claims" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">clear-cutting</a> one of the world's most important carbon sinks, Canada's boreal forest, in the name of softer TP.We are all in this climate crisis together, which is why it's crucial to make sure our leaders and retailers keep their promises. Presidents have power, but so do corporations. Corporations have power, but so do consumers.</div>Reposted with permission from  onearth <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/exxonmobil-is-still-bankrolling-climate-science-deniers">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/exxonmobil-is-still-bankrolling-climate-science-deniers</a>
https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/  exxonmobil is still bankrolling climate-science-deniers Written by Elliott Negin / Independent Media Institute October 23, 2019</div><div>ExxonMobil says it believes “the risk of climate change is real,” and it is “committed to being part of the solution.” The largest investor-owned oil company in the world also says it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.</div><div>
</div><div>Then why, after all these years, is the company still financing advocacy groups, think tanks, and business associations that reject the reality and seriousness of the climate crisis, as well as members of Congress who deny the science and oppose efforts to rein in carbon emissions?</div><div>
</div><div>According to the company’s latest grantmaking report, it gave $772,500 to 10 such groups in 2018, which does not include its annual dues to trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, which opposes a carbon tax. In addition, ExxonMobil continued to promote gridlock directly on Capitol Hill. Two-thirds of the $1.65 million it spent on congressional election campaigns during the 2017-18 election cycle went to climate science deniers.</div><div>
</div><div>Nearly half of ExxonMobil’s 2018 donations to nonprofit denier groups went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Another 30 percent went to the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which have been ExxonMobil grantees for 20 years. All told, the company has spent some $37 million since 1998 on a network of denier organizations—a sorry record of support that ranks second only to Charles Koch and his brother, the late David Koch, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries.</div><div>
</div><div>The shred of good news here is that ExxonMobil’s 2018 denier grant budget was half of what it spent in 2017 and the lowest amount since 2012. But if the company were truly serious about addressing climate change, it would cut off such funding completely. Likewise, it would support federal lawmakers who want to curb carbon emissions, not those standing in the way of government action.</div><div>
</div><div>So what did ExxonMobil get for its money in 2018?</div><div>
</div><div>Underwriting Climate Denial at the U.S. Chamber</div><div>
</div><div>In 2014, ExxonMobil pledged $5 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Capital Campaign over a five-year period on top of its annual dues, despite the lobby group’s history of misrepresenting climate science and the economics of transitioning to clean energy. Last year, the company kicked in $350,000 for the Capital Campaign and another $15,000 for the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total 2018 donation to $365,000.</div><div>
</div><div>Two years ago, the Chamber sponsored [NERA?] a widely debunked report that wildly inflated the cost of adhering to the Paris climate agreement to the U.S. economy. President Trump used that report as his primary rationale for refusing to honor the U.S. commitment to the accord.</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this year, however, the Chamber posted a new statement on its website that suggested that the business lobby is softening its position. “We stand with every American seeking a cleaner, stronger environment—for today and tomorrow,” the Chamber now asserts. “Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option.” The website also features the Chamber’s definition of an effective climate policy, which it says should include, among other things, “large-scale renewables, energy storage and batteries,” and should “encourage international cooperation.”</div><div>
</div><div>Does that mean the Chamber has finally come to its senses? Not quite. It opposed the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced coal power plant carbon emissions, and supports the Trump administration’s move to repeal it. And although a Chamber spokesman told Politico in August that it is “absolutely important for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate agreement,” he added that the “Obama administration’s pledge was unrealistic [and] was going to have a negative impact on our economy. And so we’d like to see that revisited.” In other words, the Chamber would like the United States to remain a party to the agreement so that it can try to weaken the U.S. commitment to it.</div><div>
</div><div>Backing Denial at the American Enterprise Institute</div><div>
</div><div>The American Enterprise Institute, an 80-year-old, free market think tank in Washington, D.C., has received more money from ExxonMobil than any other climate science denier organization. In 2018, ExxonMobil gave the organization $160,000, bringing its total to $4.65 million since 1998.</div><div>
</div><div>Economist Benjamin Zycher, an Enterprise Institute staff member who writes regularly about climate issues, argues that a carbon tax would be “ineffective” and has called the Paris agreement an “absurdity.” He also routinely cites largely debunked papers by John Christy, Judith Curry and other outlier scientists to buttress his attacks on what he calls “climate alarmism.”</div><div>
</div><div>Last fall, for example, Zycher took aim at the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment—a periodic, congressionally mandated analysis of peer-reviewed climate science by 13 federal agencies. The report warned that by the end of this century, unchecked climate change could cause tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The Trump administration issued it the day after Thanksgiving in the hope that it would receive limited attention.</div><div>
</div><div>Zycher took issue with the report’s conclusions in a blog post on the think tank’s website, citing “systematic evidence on climate phenomena” that he says the report ignored. His “evidence” included half-truths, cherry-picked facts and fabrications. Contrary to Zycher’s claims, human activity is responsible for more than half of the increase in average global temperatures since 1950; sea level rise has accelerated due to climate change; and although there has been little change in the frequency of hurricanes globally, research suggests there has been an increase in hurricane intensity over the past 40 years.</div><div>
</div><div>Zycher also posted a column belittling a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood that charges ExxonMobil with defrauding investors by publicly claiming to incorporate climate risks in its business decisions while downplaying or ignoring them for internal planning purposes. The lawsuit, which went to trial on October 22, alleges that ExxonMobil inflated its value, falsely assuring investors that its oil and gas reserves would not become “stranded assets” that would have to be left in the ground. Zycher accused Underwood of “picking an unpopular target and then trying to find a way to convict it of something,” and suggested that she filed the suit to advance her career.</div><div>
</div><div>Financing the Manhattan Institute’s Specious Case Against Renewables</div><div>
</div><div>The Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based think tank, received $75,000 from ExxonMobil last year for its Center for Energy Policy. Since 1998, the company has given the Libertarian policy shop more than $1.3 million.</div><div>
</div><div>Like the Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute opposes the Paris climate accord. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who regularly testified before Congress against Obama administration climate efforts, alleges the international agreement is “somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” The think tank is also an outspoken opponent of renewable energy, routinely calling for an end to federal subsidies for wind, solar and electric vehicles. At the same time, it is mum about the significantly bigger subsidies the oil and gas industry has been receiving over the last 100 years.</div><div>
</div><div>Cass’s colleague, Senior Fellow Robert Bryce, has been bashing wind power for years and, like President Trump, he wildly overstates its threat to birds. In fact, the top human-caused threats to birds are climate change, buildings, power lines, misapplied pesticides, communications towers, and oil and gas industry fluid waste pits. Bryce never mentions that. It would undermine his bogus argument.</div><div>
</div><div>Still another Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Mark P. Mills, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in May titled “What if Green Energy Isn’t the Future?” In it, he maintained that, “using wind, solar and batteries as the primary sources of a nation’s energy supply remains far too expensive.” In fact, renewables are now the cheapest type of new electricity generation for more than two-thirds of the world, according to a June report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. By 2030, Bloomberg researchers project, wind and solar will “undercut existing coal and [natural] gas almost everywhere.” Mills also failed to factor in the cost of doing nothing to curb carbon pollution. The top 10 largest climate change-related disasters in 2018 alone cost at least $85 billion in damages.</div><div>
</div><div>Aiding and Abetting Congressional Gridlock</div><div>
</div><div>On top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars ExxonMobil gave to climate science denier groups last year, the company continued to fund deniers on Capitol Hill. As noted above, 67 percent of the $1.65 million it spent during the 2017-18 election cycle—roughly $1.1 million—went to the campaigns of 189 climate science deniers. It then spent $11.15 million in 2018 to lobby lawmakers, more than any other oil and gas company.</div><div>
</div><div>One of the most talked-about climate proposals in Congress today is a carbon tax, and despite ExxonMobil’s professed decade-long support for one, it has consistently funded senators and representatives who oppose the idea. Since 2013, there have been at least five nonbinding resolutions in Congress on such a tax. Each time, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded legislators, ranging from 75 percent to 93 percent, voted against it. The most recent example of the company’s upside-down funding priorities is the outcome of a July 2018 nonbinding resolution in the House stating such a tax would be “detrimental” to the U.S. economy. Once again, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded lawmakers favored the resolution, which passed by a 229-to-180 vote. This time, 78 percent of the 174 House members who had received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2013 voted for it.</div><div>
</div><div>ExxonMobil first announced its support for a carbon tax in 2009 in a cynical attempt to derail a cap-and-trade bill in Congress, and last year, the company announced it would give $1 million over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a political action group created to promote a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The proposal—developed by the Climate Leadership Council, a coalition of corporations, environmental groups and former government officials—would levy a carbon fee starting at $40 a ton in exchange for dropping all “stationary source” (non-transportation) carbon pollution regulations and granting the fossil fuel industry immunity from climate lawsuits.</div><div>
</div><div>In a surprise move, however, the Climate Leadership Council and Americans for Carbon Dividends recently deleted the provision shielding the fossil fuel industry from liability, apparently abandoning coalition co-founders BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which are facing more than a dozen lawsuits for billions of dollars in climate change-related damages. It remains to be seen what ExxonMobil will do now, but based on past experience, the company likely will continue to finance lawmakers who cite fraudulent reports by the groups it funds to make their bogus case that climate change is not a threat. In other words, ExxonMobil will keep bankrolling climate science denial to make sure nothing happens on Capitol Hill.</div><div>
</div><div>Author’s note: Besides the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($365,000), American Enterprise Institute ($160,000) and Manhattan Institute ($75,000), ExxonMobil gave grants in 2018 to the following seven climate science denier groups: American Council on Science and Health ($60,000), Center for American and International Law ($12,500), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).</div><div>
</div><div>Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</div><div>
</div><div>This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/paris-climate-deal-must-be-legally-binding-eu-tells-john-kerry">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/paris-climate-deal-must-be-legally-binding-eu-tells-john-kerry</a></div><div><div>guk no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>paris climate deal must be legally binding, EU tells John Kerry</div><div>This article is more than 7 years old</div><div>
</div><div>US warned that any agreement in Paris will be enshrined in law after secretary of state said it would ‘definitively’ not be a treaty</div><div>Arthur Neslen Brussels and Damian Carrington</div><div>Thu 12 Nov 2015 </div><div>
</div><div>The EU has warned the Obama administration that a global climate deal at the Paris summit must be legally binding, after the US secretary of state John Kerry said that it “definitively” would not be a treaty.</div><div>
</div><div>“The Paris agreement must be an international legally binding agreement,” a spokeswoman for the EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, told the Guardian. “The title of the agreement is yet to be decided but it will not affect its legally binding form.”</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier today, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, had said it was obvious that any agreement in Paris would contain lawful elements, and suggested that Kerry was “confused” about the point.</div><div>
</div><div>French foreign minister Laurent Fabius talks to delegates during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany,  June 1, 2015. (</div><div>
</div><div>[Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks   Read more]</div><div>
</div><div>Kerry told the Financial Times on Wednesday that any agreement in Paris, where world leaders meet in three weeks’ time, is “definitively not going to be a treaty” and there were “not going to be legally binding reduction targets like Kyoto”, in a reference to the world’s only previous binding climate treaty.</div><div>
</div><div>But the nature of the agreement’s elements is being fiercely contested in talks that officials publicly say have reached a very sensitive point. Privately, they say that countries are keeping their powder dry for the frantic last days of negotiations in which a pact is expected to be thrashed out.</div><div>
</div><div>“The political-level talks in Paris start on 7 December so we still have some time to sort this out,” Cañete’s spokeswoman said. “What still needs to be negotiated is what provisions within the Paris agreement would be legally binding.”</div><div>
</div><div>The EU would like to see a five-yearly multilateral review process or “facilitative regime” that can enforce emissions commitments, with the threat of withholding climate aid being used as a stick against developing countries that renege on their promises.</div><div>
</div><div>Whether the deal will be formalised as a treaty or protocol, however, remains up in the air. The Kyoto protocol was criticised by states such as the US, which withdrew from it under the George W Bush presidency, arguing that it exempted developing countries and would damage the US economy.</div><div>
</div><div>While keen to clinch a deal in Paris, the Obama administration is worried that a Republican-dominated US Senate could demand a deciding say over any treaty with legally binding obligations.</div><div>
</div><div>Some influential countries seem willing to extend Obama the benefit of the doubt. “We don’t need a treaty in Paris,” the Moroccan environment minister Hakima el Haite told a UN climate conference in Rabat last month. “We need a universal agreement in which everyone agrees and commits – and is engaged to respect commitments and contributions. That is what we are working for.”</div><div>
</div><div>Bob Ward, the policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said that the Paris agreement was always intended as a complement to emissions pledges, rather than a body of statute.</div><div>
</div><div>“John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has simply restated what has been understood for a long time,” he said. “It was agreed at the United Nations climate change summit in Durban in 2011 that countries would seek a new and universal greenhouse gas reduction protocol, legal instrument or other outcome with legal force. The Paris agreement will fulfil this.”</div><div>
</div><div>But it remains unclear what sanctions could be imposed against developed countries that flout their obligations, or how the review process would ramp up inadequate climate pledges. Countries putting forward their climate plans in recent days include Bosnia, which anticipates a 70% increase in emissions by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, and oil-rich Saudi Arabia.</div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>5/19 house bill pro paris  </div><div><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/27/what-climate-leadership-looks-democrats-bill-would-stop-trump-ditching-paris-accord">https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/27/what-climate-leadership-looks-democrats-bill-would-stop-trump-ditching-paris-accord</a></div><div>
</div><div>House Democrats Wednesday introduced legislation to bar President Donald Trump from ditching the Paris climate accord and force the White House to submit a plan to slash carbon emissions, drawing praise from environmental groups.</div><p class="pullquote" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px 20px; text-align: right; width: 263.344px;">"Donald Trump's attempt to withdraw the United States from this landmark agreement is one of his most egregious steps to weaken our country's international standing."  —Michael Brune, Sierra Club"The Climate Action Now Act sends a powerful message to the rest of the world that when it comes to climate change and the Paris agreement, President Trump is out of step with the strong majority of Americans who want the U.S. to be a global leader, not a rogue nation," Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/03/27/house-leaders-introduce-legislation-requiring-us-remain-paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">statement</a>.The <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/blog/CASTOR_010_xml.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">bill</a> (pdf), also known as H.R. 9, comes nearly two years after Trump sparked global outrage by <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/06/01/destructive-fossil-fuel-puppet-trump-ditches-climate-deal-fact-free-speech" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">declaring his intent to withdraw</a> from the Paris deal. Under the terms of the agreement, the earliest possible withdrawal date is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/trump-and-the-paris-agreement-what-just-happened/536040/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">November 4, 2020</a>.If passed, the Democrats' legislation would block Trump from using federal funds to pull the U.S. from the Paris deal and require the president to develop a plan to meet the accord's emissions targets.The bill was unveiled at a press conference Wednesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), and other House Democrats<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</h3><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05022019/michigan-whitmer-office-climate-change-energy-filnt-water-policies-climate-alliance">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05022019/michigan-whitmer-office-climate-change-energy-filnt-water-policies-climate-alliance</a></div><div>
</div><div>Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan signed orders on Monday to revamp the state's environmental policy apparatus, becoming the latest newly elected Democratic leader in an industrial swing state to pick up the reins of action on climate change.</div><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Whitmer is creating a new <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-488736--,00.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">office of climate and energy</a> that will coordinate efforts across state government to address climate change and will ensure that climate change is a consideration in the vetting of new policies.She also signed an order to join the <a href="https://www.usclimatealliance.org/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">U.S. Climate Alliance</a>, a group of governors who commit to upholding the principles of the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paris climate agreement</a>. Michigan is the 20th governor to join, following similar actions by others who came to power after running green campaigns and toppling Republican incumbents. In the past few weeks, the governors of <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24012019/great-lakes-governors-climate-change-clean-enegy-pipelines-michigan-illinois-attorney-general-clean-power-plan-lawsuits" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Illinois</a> and <a href="https://www.governor.state.nm.us/2019/01/29/gov-lujan-grisham-signs-executive-order-committing-new-mexico-to-essential-climate-change-action/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">New Mexico</a> have also joined.Michigan stood out as a fulcrum of Donald Trump's narrow electoral victory. It's an economic monument to the internal combustion engine, but also a place where the urgency of confronting environmental challenges, including climate change, can't be ignored.</div></div></div></div><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=702cf66c51&e=c2e8fdabfa" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Church of England to Divest From Companies That Neglect Paris Agreement Goals</a> 7/18g7<div>
</div><div>trump wants russia back, bullies cda, tariffs</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10062018/g7-summit-climate-change-communique-trump-allies-estranged-germany-france-canada">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10062018/g7-summit-climate-change-communique-trump-allies-estranged-germany-france-canada</a></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052018/un-climate-talks-trump-negotiators-bonn-pompeo-bolton-kudlow-foreign-policy/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052018/un-climate-talks-trump-negotiators-bonn-pompeo-bolton-kudlow-foreign-policy/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>In Shadow of Trump’s New Foreign Policy Team, U.S. Climate Negotiators Walk a Fine Line</div><div>Staunch opponents of climate policy are now advising Trump on foreign affairs, leaving career U.S. diplomats in an awkward spot at the UN climate talks in Bonn.</div><div>
</div><div>By Marianne Lavelle</div><div>May 4, 2018</div></div>all pro climate trump admin gone!Dobriansky [~ kyoto?]...The absence of U.S. leadership at Bonn may be keenly felt in the one-day session scheduled for May 8 dedicated to the so-called Talanoa Dialogue, the process to reexamine the commitments that individual nations have made so far. (Fiji, the current chair of the talks, chose the traditional word "Talanoa" to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue.)<div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">So far, there are 48 <a href="https://talanoadialogue.com/submit-inputs" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">submissions</a> to the dialogue representing the views of 178 countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement, as well as hundreds of submissions by non-governmental organizations, addressing how nations might raise their ambitions. The United States is among about 20 nations that had offered no submission as of Wednesday. (Other large carbon emitters that have not made Talanoa Dialogue submissions include Canada and Brazil.)The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is scheduled to contribute to the discussion this fall in the form of a special report on the science behind a tougher goal, keeping  <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12012018/ipcc-climate-change-1.5-degrees-poverty-environmental-justice-draft-report" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">global warming to 1.5°C</a> above pre-industrial levels. But the national commitments that have been made under the Paris Agreement so far only get the world a third of the way to the goal of keeping the temperature increase below 2°C, as the United Nations Environment Program's "Emissions Gap" <a href="https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/emissions-gap-report" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">report </a>showed last year."We don't have to wait for the IPCC report to know that we are way behind the curve," said Meyer.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Room for Hope?</h3>Although few observers of the climate talks have illusions that the Trump administration—especially with its new foreign policy team—will offer to set stronger goals to cut carbon emissions, French President <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?444422-1/french-president-macron-pushes-comprehensive-iran-nuclear-deal-address-congress" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Emmanuel Macron's remarks before Congress</a> last week demonstrated that some world leaders still hold out hope that the United States will return to the climate fight in the long run."I am sure, one day, the United States will come back and join the Paris Agreement," Macron told Congress. "Let us face it: There is no Planet B."And when Pompeo, during his <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4724519/sen-merkley-asks-pompeo-views-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">confirmation hearing</a>, faced a question on climate change from Sen. Jeff Merkley, (D-Ore.), he replied: "I ... believe the climate is changing, that there's a warming taking place. I'm happy to concede that there's a human component to that. I'm equally prepared to tell you that as we find tools that are effective to prevent the risk to the United States ... the State Department ought to appropriately be involved in them." (In fact, human causes are behind most or all of the observed warming in recent decades, and the risks go beyond what affects the United States. International diplomacy also is needed to address the fact that the U.S. and other developed countries are largely to blame for the warming seen so far, which presents worse risks to nations like small island states that have contributed little to atmospheric carbon emissions.)One avowed optimist is the Trump White House's former international climate adviser, George David Banks, who had supported staying in the Paris Agreement. He maintains that the hard-line U.S. stand puts the nation in a stronger negotiating position when it comes to the talks now underway. That's because the rest of the world knows the Trump administration is willing to walk away, he argues."The Trump administration could not have negotiated the Paris Agreement—it took the Obama administration to do that," argues Banks. "But now that the international community has invested so much political capital in the agreement, the Trump administration has much more leverage than a Hillary Clinton administration would have had in finalizing these points. It's an interesting situation."But on top of the changes in Trump's top echelon of foreign policy advisers, recent staff turnover at the White House adds to uncertainty around the future U.S. role in the climate talks.Banks, who served as a climate negotiator in President George W. Bush's administration, resigned from his Trump administration post earlier this year when he could not obtain a security clearance. Trump's top domestic energy adviser, Michael Catanzaro, has also resigned to return to his former lobbying practice. Banks and Catanzaro, both of whom have years of experience working on energy issues, have been replaced by two young newcomers to the field. GOP political operative Wells Griffith, whose only previous experience in energy was a one-year stint in Trump's Energy Department, has been appointed to lead international climate and energy strategy for the White House, while Francis Brooke [trump plum] , a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who moderated a panel on fossil fuels at last year's climate talks, will take Catanzaro's place as top domestic energy adviser.Observers also are watching to see if the Trump administration follows through on a plan, first <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/trump-is-said-to-pick-dobriansky-for-senior-state-department-job" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">reported by Bloomberg</a>, to nominate Paula Dobriansky, who was a lead climate negotiator under President George W. Bush, as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department. Dobriansky's <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2005_hr/051114-dobriansky.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">past statements</a> indicate that she accepts the reality of manmade climate change, although she favors "collaboration, not coercion," and close partnerships with industry. (When Bush backed out of the Kyoto accord, she gave <a href="https://twitter.com/jackcushmanjr/status/989537776092827650" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">credit </a>to the oil lobby.)For the time being, Meyer sees the U.S. negotiating team as significantly hampered by its lack of high-level support and the power to deal. If his assessment is correct, even if the U.S. returns to the Paris Agreement in the future, it may be under rules that it was unable to influence."You basically have a loss of leadership," he said. "The [U.S.] team is doing the best they can on the technical rules, but obviously they don't have as much leverage on that issue when they are not playing on other issues. They are negotiating with one hand tied behind their back, and that creates a vacuum that others are trying to figure out how to fill."</div></div></div></div><div class="tagged-with" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><label style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;">PUBLISHED UNDER:</label><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/global-climate-treaty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">GLOBAL CLIMATE TREATY</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/climate-denial" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE DENIAL</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE CHANGE</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/paris-climate-agreement" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT</a></div> <div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">DONALD TRUMP</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/mike-pompeo" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">MIKE POMPEO</a></div></div></div></div>=It's been a summer of catastrophic weather events: monsoons in India and Bangladesh, hurricanes in the Caribbean and the U.S. Southeast, and wildfires across the U.S. West. The impacts of climate change are killing people and destroying communities, and we need bold action on climate policy, now. But as delegates from around the world head to <a href="https://www.cop-23.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">COP23</a>, the annual meeting of the U.N. climate treaty, Corporate Accountability's new report exposes just how big a threat corporate capture poses to securing bold and visionary climate policy."<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.corporateaccountability.org/pollutingparis&source=gmail&ust=1510072100136000&usg=AFQjCNF0ztprF8qAas03O5gDs_z7H6UPSg" href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/pollutingparis" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Polluting Paris: How Big Polluters are Undermining Global Climate Policy</a>" is a first-of-its-kind assessment of corporate capture in the history of the U.N. climate treaty (formally known as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change). It finds that transnational corporations, and the governments in their pockets, are pushing a pro-industry, anti-regulation agenda. As a result, a menu of false solutions are front and center in the treaty negotiations where delegates hope to hammer out the details in implementing the Paris Agreement over the next weeks. For example, corporate influence has tilted the negotiations toward market-oriented trading mechanisms that benefit the industry groups and corporations supporting them. Meanwhile, non-market solutions like direct finance and binding emissions reductions—solutions backed by evidence proving their effectiveness—have been pushed to the back burner. The release of this report provides support for and bolsters the work of government delegates from across the Global South who are advocating for true, people-centered solutions to climate change. It was written in collaboration with the <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.apmdd.org/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100136000&usg=AFQjCNF9K-N5xdgu9pP5Yyg3dCvnYrH3Sw" href="https://www.apmdd.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development</a>, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//corporateeurope.org/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100136000&usg=AFQjCNEF-zIYqKuHsu6eQghH4W9ziIW19Q" href="https://corporateeurope.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Corporate Europe Observatory</a>, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//etcgroup.org/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100136000&usg=AFQjCNGneMZ9u0B4ZOxNFeSZbpZt_1d0Cg" href="https://etcgroup.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group)</a> and <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//actionaid.org/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100136000&usg=AFQjCNEuhXtYrNTnsvggEiJPpFxLrmzLiQ" href="https://actionaid.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ActionAid International</a>.U.S., EU and trade associations push fossil fuel agenda In an unsurprising twist, the report also reveals that many global north governments—with Donald Trump and the U. S. front and center—are acting at the behest of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries to undermine progress. The Trump administration <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://thinkprogress.org/dirty-deputies-fill-trump-administration-9e78a260e62b/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNGf6kVa5Q2rytjXnwl2xj8BzJP9Uw" href="https://thinkprogress.org/dirty-deputies-fill-trump-administration-9e78a260e62b/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">has unprecedented ties to the fossil fuel industry</a>. Many of Trump's appointees <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/13/15789772/trumps-fossil-fuel-all-stars&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNHJUKwHRTJ-EJsPdcB788lH6wstZg" href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/13/15789772/trumps-fossil-fuel-all-stars" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">used to work on behalf</a> of oil, coal and gas industries, while many more <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2017/04/trump-teams-heavy-energy-ties-219658&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNEZa-PN-W-k-GHBmgkFsbH30yDBaA" href="https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2017/04/trump-teams-heavy-energy-ties-219658" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">are either deeply invested in the industry</a> or claim to doubt the settled science of climate change. Indeed, “Polluting Paris” is the latest report in a growing <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.climatechangenews.com/2017/10/23/un-shipping-climate-talks-captured-industry/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNGniTLBlVQbxO2uPUq4sM29zIF63g" href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/10/23/un-shipping-climate-talks-captured-industry/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">body of evidence</a> that clearly shows corporate interference—often <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://corporateeurope.org/climate-and-energy/2017/10/great-gas-lock&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFNwjEhZlFpk-OArUuhprV0hjTK8Q" href="https://corporateeurope.org/climate-and-energy/2017/10/great-gas-lock" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">orchestrated by corporate lobbyists, industry groups, and Global North governments</a>—is one of the primary obstacles to climate progress.Additionally, the report exposes the influence of trade associations like the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). IETA's <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.ieta.org/Industry-Energy-%26-Power&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFk83josqTMFD2T31VHwKgdmEvtUw" href="https://www.ieta.org/Industry-Energy-&-Power" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">members include</a> oil giants BP and Chevron, and coal corporations BHP Biliton, Duke Energy and Rio Tinto. The trade group has insinuated itself so far into the talks, one of its <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=//www.ieta.org/Governance&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNGGP5qGp75SYifsrNVfwoZlyCOdLg" href="https://www.ieta.org/Governance" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">own board members negotiates on behalf of Panama</a> and is a co-coordinator on market mechanisms for the largest negotiating bloc at the U.N. climate treaty."If we don’t put an end to it now, lobbyists and delegates representing industry interests will ensure the Paris Agreement promotes—rather than protects against—the money-making schemes of the world’s biggest polluters," said Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, international policy director at Corporate Accountability.Kicking big polluters out Corporate Accountability is organizing to put an end to it. A team of organizers and experts from Corporate Accountability are at the negotiations to support governments committed to curbing corporate capture of global climate policy. People across the U.S. can also <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.corporateaccountability.org/get-involved/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFr-GWjb0DNuQgL6IHh8nenh4wIIw" href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/get-involved/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">take action</a> to support this call. Corporate Accountability's <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.corporateaccountability.org/climate/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNGu4BA_nqHBVtP_Kx9vQojeIiizxQ" href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/climate/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate campaign</a> builds on a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.corporateaccountability.org/who-we-are/history/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFFezk8XxLgRszp4LsnWgcdKDLuyg" href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/who-we-are/history/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">40-year history</a> of successfully moving transnational corporations to end their abuses. In the early 2000s, we supported governments and allies in the Global South to protect the World Health Organization’s global tobacco treaty from Big Tobacco’s influence and remove the industry from public health policymaking. The initiative to kick Big Polluters out of climate policy builds on the precedence set by that treaty.
Download the <a href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/resources/polluting-paris-big-polluters-undermining-global-climate-policy/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">full report</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/resources/executive-summary-polluting-paris-how-big-polluters-are-undermining-global-climate-policy/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">executive summary</a>.And it's gaining great traction globally. In May 2017, the issue of corporate influence in the climate talks <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/climate/corporations-global-climate-talks-bonn-germany.html?mcubz%3D1%26_r%3D0&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNGq2u4APkwPuU1LREhToypLg8nwNg" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/climate/corporations-global-climate-talks-bonn-germany.html?mcubz=1&r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">captured international attention</a> at the treaty meetings. The meeting culminated in <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.corporateaccountability.org/blog/conflict-of-interest-takes-top-billing-at-bonn/&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFAUc9FPCesBy39JtNnxgCwniTf8A" href="https://www.corporateaccountability.org/blog/conflict-of-interest-takes-top-billing-at-bonn/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">calls from governments</a> for a conflict of interest policy. And just last month, the European Parliament <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.desmog.uk/2017/10/04/european-parliament-say-no-fossil-fuel-lobbying-international-climate-talks&source=gmail&ust=1510072100137000&usg=AFQjCNFWwYagHB9HNFIJv1V4nsvg9W12Zw" href="https://www.desmog.uk/2017/10/04/european-parliament-say-no-fossil-fuel-lobbying-international-climate-talks" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">called for its negotiators to prioritize addressing the harmful influence of polluting industry interests</a> at COP23. While the European Council ultimately overlooked that call, we expect governments to take up the issue again at the next intersessional talks in May 2018. <div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style=""><div class="bio-new body_environment" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both;"><div class="author-bio" style="">Kelle Louaillier is the president of <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://stopcorporateabuse.org/&source=gmail&ust=1484156677336000&usg=AFQjCNEYbidcr-ZRZPWGmEnXrN44ytzt4Q" href="http://stopcorporateabuse.org/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Corporate Accountability</a>.</div></div>==

Nicaragua to Sign Paris Agreement, Leaving Trump Alone With Syria

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<a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/20/1700089/-27-companies-publicly-supporting-Paris-climate-accord-donated-millions-to-GOP-group-undermining-it">https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/20/1700089/-27-companies-publicly-supporting-Paris-climate-accord-donated-millions-to-GOP-group-undermining-it</a>

Twenty-seven companies that urged the Trump regime to stick with the Paris Climate Accord also contributed a total of $3.3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) that has worked assiduously to dump President Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan. That plan was designed specifically to reduce greenhouse emissions from U.S. power plants in 2030 by 32 percent over 2005. It’s the key U.S. government effort to help meet the emissions goals of the nonbinding Paris accord. And it’s in limbo.

[table list]

companies supporting Republican Attorney Generals Association who also say they support Paris Climate Accord.

This is how the 27 companies that urged the Trump regime not to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord divided their donations to the Republican and Democratic attorney generals associations. The Republican group has been highly active in trying to dump the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan that would cut greenhouse emissions. [[While Daniel Weiner at the Brennan Center may not doubt the companies’ sincerity in the matter of climate change, it should not be forgotten that long before the Clean Power Plan was around to be bashed by the group now getting their cash, many of these companies were not exactly on the cutting edge in dealing with climate change. In fact, as we have learned over the recent past, Exxon Mobil—which gave $210,000 to RAGA and none to its Democratic counterparts—donated a hell of a lot more money to help engineer decades of climate science denial when they full well knew that this disinformation was contributing to a global disaster.]]

The excuse from the companies that responded to investigators from the Center for Public Integrity who revealed the contributions? It’s just politics. They said they had also contributed to the Democratic Attorneys General Association. In other words, all that cash was just pragmatism on their part. Uh-huh.

The center’s Rachel Leven and Jamie Smith Hopkins write:

But campaign finance experts countered that business officials can influence policy without writing a check to decision-makers like attorneys general—advocating their policy positions through lobbyists, for example. Because these businesses have said climate action is a priority, making political contributions that can work against that goal puts their reputations or even revenues at risk, these experts said.

"I don't doubt that their public statements about the Paris climate agreement are sincere but it matters that when it actually comes down to how they spend their money, they're giving to politicians that have almost the exact opposite goal," said Daniel Weiner, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy Program, which advocates for campaign finance reform. "It doesn't mean that they're actually lying, but it does lead one to wonder how strong their commitment to fight global warming actually is.

While RAGA has, of course, engaged in other activity, the center’s reporters note that the Clean Power Plan, which requires states to come up with methods of reducing emissions from fossil-fuel power plants within their boundaries, has gotten “an outsize share of energy” from Republican attorneys general.

Along with a handful of Democratic AGs, the Republicans have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over the plan in a case that is slowly winding its way toward the Supreme Court. The court itself ruled 5-4 in early 2016 that the plan should be on hold until a lower court ruling on it is decided. Indeed, on RAGA’s list of achievements on its website: convincing the court "to halt implementation of Obama's signature climate change initiative."

Levin and Hopkins found that only two of the 27 companies had openly challenged the Clean Power Plan. Several others have supported it strongly, with Google and Microsoft going so far as to file legal arguments against the lawsuit the Republican AGs had launched. And yet those two contributed nearly $400,000 to RAGA. Worst of all among the 27 was SolarCity, the nation’s largest provider of residential solar panels. The morning the Supreme Court stayed the Clean Power Plan, SolarCity’s stock plummeted. That ought to have delivered a clear message. Yet just three months later, the company contributed $20,000 to RAGA, giving nothing to the Democratic Attorney Generals Association. Perhaps that was just stupidity. But it sure wasn’t evidence of sincerity.

In response to the Center for Public Integrity’s reporters, Coca-Cola and Intel noted that they don’t expect their contributions to align perfectly with every group to which they give money.

But Bruce F. Freed, president of the watchdog Center for Political Accountability, points out how not paying attention to what’s being done with that money can backfire. In 2010, Target, which had developed a reputation for gay-friendly policies, was boycotted for contributing $150,000 to the super PAC of a candidate who opposed marriage equality. The company at first said this was just pragmatic politics, contributing to pro-business candidates in both parties. But the boycott eventually generated a Target apology. "There are real consequences," Freed said, "when there is a disconnect."

Real consequences. And big ones.

While Daniel Weiner at the Brennan Center may not doubt the companies’ sincerity in the matter of climate change, it should not be forgotten that long before the Clean Power Plan was around to be bashed by the group now getting their cash, many of these companies were not exactly on the cutting edge in dealing with climate change. In fact, as we have learned over the recent past, Exxon Mobil—which gave $210,000 to RAGA and none to its Democratic counterparts—donated a hell of a lot more money to help engineer decades of climate science denial when they full well knew that this disinformation was contributing to a global disaster.

But that stream of cash, just like their current contributions, was designed to protect their bottom line. Never mind the planet’s bottom line.

no links

==

<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-united-nations-2486698351.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-united-nations-2486698351.html</a>

trump eh post hurricane

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ceo open ltr (dow 180)

As CEOs of large American companies, or with significant operations in the United States, we are concerned about keeping the doors open for the global flow of American manufactured goods and products at this critical time when our Manufacturing sector is starting to grow from our competitive energy advantage.

Based on our vast experience doing business all over the world, we believe there is strong potential for negative trade implications if the United States exits from the Paris Agreement.

Our business interests are best served by a stable and practical framework facilitating an effective and balanced response to reducing global GHG emissions. The Paris Agreement gives us that flexible framework to manage climate change while providing a smooth transition for business. We believe that American companies…and our suppliers, customers, and communities… will benefit from U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement in several ways:

<li>It strengthens our competitiveness in global markets.</li>

<li>It benefits American manufacturing as we modernize to new, more efficient technologies.</li>

<li>It supports investment by setting clear goals which enable long-term planning.</li>

<li>It expands global and domestic markets for clean, energy-efficient technologies which will generate jobs and economic growth.</li>

<li>It encourages market-based solutions and innovation to achieve emissions reductions at low cost.</li>

</ul>

We are committed to working with you to create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness, and we believe this can be best achieved by remaining in the Paris Agreement. Let’s work together to maintain the United States’ status as the world’s biggest champion of economic growth and innovation.

We appreciate the opportunity to share our views and would welcome the opportunity to provide further input as the Administration continues to shape its policies.

Sincerely,

Inge Thulin, 3M Company

James K. Kamsickas, Dana Incorporated

Michael B. Polk, Newell Brands, Inc.

Oliver Bäte, Allianz SE

Andrew Liveris, The Dow Chemical Company

Geisha Williams, Pacific Gas & Electric

Brian Moynihan, Bank of America Corp.

Edward Breen, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company

David Taylor, Procter & Gamble Company

Zhang Yue, BROAD Group

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric

Feike Sijbesma, Royal DSM

Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup Company

Lloyd C. Blankfein, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc

Marc Benioff, Salesforce

David W. MacLennan, Cargill Inc.

William Brown, Harris Corporation

Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, Solvay

Michael L. Corbat, Citigroup, Inc.

Alex Gorsky, Johnson & Johnson

Elon Musk, Tesla

James Quincey, The Coca Cola Company

Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase

Paul Polman, Unilever

Wendell Weeks, Corning Incorporated

François-Henri Pinault, Kering

Richard Branson, Virgin

Tom Linebarger, Cummins Inc.

James Gorman, Morgan Stanley

Robert A. Iger, The Walt Disney Group

==

<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html</a>

Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers

no link

The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests.

The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Guardian calculated that the 22 senators received a total of $10,694,284 from oil, gas and coal money in just five years. (See the breakdown below.

However, that sum does not even come close to the amount of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch's coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.

As the Guardian explains:

"Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.

"At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."

Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, shared recently his views on Trump's climate walkout.In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Sachs referenced the senators' letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.

"This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch," Sachs said. "They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this."

Notably, most of the Republican signatories of the letter do not support the belief that human activity contributes to climate change.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts explained why he thinks his Republican colleagues do not believe in the science of climate change.

"This Conservative party in the United States is funded by the Koch brothers [and] it's funded by the coal industry," Markey said. "[They] insist that Scott Pruitt—the Attorney General of Oklahoma that actually sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issues—becomes the head of the EPA in our country."

The 22 Republican signatories' funding from Big Oil, Gas and Coal in the past three election cycles (2012, 2014 and 2016):

James Inhofe, Oklahoma

Oil & gas: $465,950 + Coal: $63,600 = $529,550

John Barrasso, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $458,466 + Coal: $127,356 = $585,822

Mitch McConnell, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $1,180,384 + Coal: $361,700 = $1,542,084

John Cornyn, Texas

Oil & gas: $1,101,456 + Coal: $33,050 = $1,134,506

Roy Blunt, Missouri

Oil & gas: $353,864 + Coal: $96,000 = $449,864

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $198,816 + Coal: $25,376 = $224,192

Michael Enzi, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $211,083 + Coal: $63,300 = $274,383

Mike Crapo, Idaho

Oil & gas: $110,250 + Coal: $26,756 = $137,006

Jim Risch, Idaho

Oil & gas: $123,850 + Coal: $25,680 = $149,530

Thad Cochran, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $276,905 + Coal: $15,000 = $291,905

Mike Rounds, South Dakota

Oil & gas: $201,900 + Coal: none = $201,900

Rand Paul, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $170,215 + Coal: $82,571 = $252,786

John Boozman, Arkansas

Oil & gas: $147,930 + Coal: $2,000 = $149,930

Richard Shelby, Alabama

Oil & gas: $60,150 + $2,500 = $62,650

Luther Strange, Alabama (Appointed in 2017, running in 2017 special election)

Total: NA

Orrin Hatch, Utah

Oil & gas: $446,250 + Coal: $25,000 = $471,250

Mike Lee, Utah

Oil & gas: $231,520 + Coal: $21,895 = $253,415

Ted Cruz, Texas

Oil & gas: $2,465,910 + Coal: $103,900 = $2,569,810

David Perdue, Georgia

Oil & gas: $184,250 + Coal: $0 = $184,250

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Oil & gas: $263,400 + Coal: $0 = $263,400

Tim Scott, South Carolina

Oil & gas: $490,076 + Coal: $58,200 = $548,276

Pat Roberts, Kansas

Oil & gas: $388,950 + Coal: $28,825 = $417,775

</div>

===

<a href="https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/">https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/</a>

<a href="http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=17-P13-00021&segmentID=1">http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=17-P13-00021&segmentID=1</a>

bonn COP

...CURWOOD: Now, you're not telling me that all corporate lobbying at these events is designed to subvert the process, are you?

BRAGG: What I'm telling you is that there’s actually ... it would be very to difficult to discern who is and who isn't in the interest of climate policy, and frankly, that's not the role of an intergovernmental process to pick the winners and losers in the private sector. And so we need to be very careful about who is at the table and who isn't at the table and especially not rely on PR and advertisements from the likes of the fossil fuel industry to try to convince us that they have the interests of people and the planet in mind when their actions over the last two decades, at least, have proved otherwise.

CURWOOD: Now, as I understand it, the trade groups, of course, and other interest groups don't actually have a seat at the table. How are they able to court the diplomats and otherwise influence talks?

BRAGG: Well, you look at the example from COP 21. There were numerous examples of side events sponsored by the fossil fuel industry, by energy utilities where they wined and dined delegates and others, decision-makers, presumably toward their agenda. If you look at COP 19 in Warsaw, there was an entire parallel meeting hosted by the World Coal Association where delegates were invited, the head of the Secretariat of the Treaty actually spoke at that event.

CURWOOD: Which countries are championing limitations on corporate influence at the climate talks, and which made some kind of case for maintaining the kind of presence that companies have right now?

BRAGG: The champions of this issue were clearly Ecuador, and actually Uganda. Ecuador spoke representing the like-minded developing countries. Uganda spoke representing the least developed countries block. And actually, Senegal spoke representing the African negotiating group. Altogether, those groups represent far more than 70 percent of the world's population. And so, they were the leaders, but they were supported by Cuba. China spoke very, very strongly in support of these limitations, saying that the voices of the vulnerable are often drowned out by the voices of the rich and wealthy corporate interests. And those who were opposed to this were pretty easy to identify. You're looking at the US, Australia, Russia, and to some extent, the European Union, all places where the fossil fuel industry is based and representing countries that have the most at stake economically with the continuation of business as usual when it comes to extracting and burning fossil fuels.

CURWOOD: Jesse, talk to me about how these discussions in some ways parallel what happened at the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This is back in 2003. What can we take away from how that treaty successfully put limitations on the tobacco industry's lobbying at those sessions?

...BRAGG: It's a great example and a fantastic precedent to look to when you’re trying to figure out how to address industry influence in any policymaking process. When parties, governments, got together to hash out the framework convention on tobacco control, they quickly realized that one of the primary obstacles to their progress was the tobacco industry. You know, it's very easy to understand why the tobacco industry has no incentive to advance public health policy. Every step forward we take in public health and tobacco control means one less dollar in the pockets of tobacco industry. And so, they brought forward a really bold proposal, it was one line of text initially that just said that parties need to take steps to reduce the influence of the tobacco industry over public health. And since then, the implementation of this treaty has taken off. And that's really the model we need to look at when we're talking about the fossil fuel industry and climate change. We need information from them. They have a role. But we also need to limit their influence and understand that they shouldn't be writing the policy by which they need to abide.

CURWOOD: What corporate associations are exercising the most undue influence on the climate talks in your opinion?

BRAGG: The two organizations that really stood out in terms of influence over these recent talks were the International Chamber of Commerce and the US Chamber of Commerce. The International Chamber of Commerce, their role is really to keep the door open for businesses around the world. They believe, and they're very proud of it, that corporations, including the fossil fuel industry, need to be at the table helping parties write the rules that we're going to implement the Paris Agreement under, and so in that way they take every opportunity to advance and expand the access of the private sector. The US chamber actually held a side event at the UNFCCC talks in which they said that US fossil fuel corporations are going to be central to this process as well. One of their representatives actually then went on to say that the US is going to need to revise down its commitments to the Paris agreement, and more or less said that, people need to get used to that, that that’s the way it was, really towing the line of the Trump administration that these commitments need to be reviewed.

CURWOOD: Now, under the Paris agreement, the fossil fuel industry will be selling their products perhaps as late as 2050. It will take a while to phase out what they do. If they are, in fact, going to be part of the energy mix going forward as they are right now, why shouldn't they have some input into these negotiation processes so that they can deal with their business in an orderly fashion?

BRAGG: I think there's a big difference between having input and being part of a process, and what governments have been saying and what the sort of broad campaign around this is calling for, is to draw that line. When are we gathering input from those industries we're seeking to regulate and when are we actually allowing them to be part of the policymaking process? And so, certainly there's going to be a great need to consult with the industry and gather information from the industry as needed as we’re developing the implementation of this agreement, but the question here is not whether or not we need input. It's whether or not they should have a role in writing the rules, and that's what this discussion was about.

BRAGG: Well, it's a long process. Decisions are made by consensus at the UNFCCC, which means you need more or less the vast majority, if not all governments to agree, and so while that is a great process because it's inclusive, it does mean that things take time. We know the next milestone for this movement is next meeting in Bonn in May next year, so 2018, where parties will refer to submissions that governments and civil society groups have made on this issue and chart a path forward.  CURWOOD: When can we expect some sort of formal limitations to be agreed upon in terms of corporate lobbying at the UN climate meetings, if ever?

CURWOOD: Jesse Bragg is the Media Director of Corporate Accountability International.

==

G7

...French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump at length about the climate deal during a meeting Thursday in Brussels. At the Vatican earlier in the week, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin made his own pro-Paris pitch to Trump and his advisers. The matter was also a central focus of Trump’s two days of talks at the Group of 7 summit, which kicked off Friday on the picturesque Sicilian coast.

At the close of Friday’s talks, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said six of the G-7 nations — Italy, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan — confirmed “our commitment and our determination” to the Paris agreement. The United States, meanwhile, confirmed “a period of reflection” on the issue, he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “we put forward very many arguments” for the U.S. sticking with the agreement.

The White House’s slow decision-making on the future of the landmark 2015 climate change agreement created the opening for the European leaders’ persuasion campaign. Multiple White House meetings on the matter were delayed in recent weeks, and Trump advisers ultimately said he would not make a decision until after he returns to Washington from a nine-day, five-stop international trip.

As a candidate, Trump vowed to withdraw the U.S. from the accord, which was negotiated during the Obama administration. But as the opening months of his presidency have shown, Trump can be moved to change his positions and can be heavily influenced by other world leaders. He backed away from his tough campaign talk about trade with China after a summit with President Xi Jinping and abandoned his criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record following his warm welcome in the desert kingdom earlier this week...

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no link

22 GOP Senators vs. World Leaders on Paris Agreement

Twenty-two GOP senators sent a letter Thursday urging Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris agreement. They argued remaining in the deal could "upend" the administration's ability "to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan."

Accounting for fewer than half of Senate Republicans, signers included coal-friendly politicians and prominent climate deniers, such as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Overseas, French president-elect Emmanuel Macron urged Trump not to make a "rushed decision" on the agreement at a Thursday meeting. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn predicts "fairly robust" talks on the Paris agreement at this weekend's G7 leadership summit in Sicily, and European leaders at the summit have indicated they will pressure Trump to remain in the deal.

As The Guardian reported:

"Some western powers are trying to frame the climate change discussion as a national security argument, pointing to the risk of war and terrorism if mass migration explodes out of drought-ridden Africa.

Trump's aides insist he remains in listening mode on climate change, and no decision will be made for a few weeks. The British, eternal optimists, at least sense he is moving on the issue. Results may have to wait for the G20 summit, to be attended by China in Hamburg in June."

For a deeper dive:

GOP letter: AP, Axios, The Hill; Macron: Reuters, CNBC; G7: The Guardian, Reuters, BBC

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/paris-agreement-g7-2422835676.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/paris-agreement-g7-2422835676.html</a></div>

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AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and 21 other Republicans on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

The GOP senators sent a two-page letter to the White House saying that remaining in the international agreement signed by Trump’s predecessor pledging to reduce carbon emissions could fuel legal challenges to the administration’s push to roll back environmental regulations.

Most of the senators who signed are from states that depend on the continued burning of coal, oil and gas. That includes Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe and others who, like Trump, have suggested the scientific data showing the Earth is warming due to man-made carbon emissions is a hoax.

The letter signers account for fewer than half of Senate Republicans. A similar letter was also sent to Trump this week by attorneys general from 10 Republican-led states, including oil-rich Texas and coal-dependent West Virginia.

Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to “renegotiate” the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the 2015 deal, which was signed by nearly 200 countries.

There are also influential voices urging Trump not to ditch the Paris accord. Forty Democratic Senators sent Trump a letter earlier this week urging him to stay in, saying a withdrawal would hurt America’s credibility and influence on the world stage.

Hundreds of high-profile businesses have spoken out in favor of the deal, including Apple, Google and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

During Trump’s visit to Rome this week, Pope Francis also urged Trump to take climate change seriously.

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chomsky requiem says morocco abandoned (# on verbal promise Paris)

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052017/paris-climate-talks-fossil-fuel-influence-conflict-interest">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052017/paris-climate-talks-fossil-fuel-influence-conflict-interest</a>

Participants in global climate negotiations will have at least another year to debate the role fossil fuel companies and other influential industries should play in the international talks, after negotiators at the latest round of United Nations talks kicked the can down the road.

After days of adamant debate, a murkily phrased <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2017/sbi/eng/l10.pdf" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">compromise</a> invited countries, businesses, activists and others to share their views by January 2018 on how to increase the "openness, transparency and inclusiveness" of outside observers at climate talks. It was <a href="https://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/bonn_may_2017/channels/sb46-plenary-new-york" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">approved</a> as negotiators from around the world wrapped up the Bonn climate conference on Thursday evening.

The discussions of corporate conflicts of interest were among the most contentious at the mid-year talks, which largely focused on technical aspects of climate negotiations, such as building out rules for implementing the 2015 <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/Paris-climate-agreement" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paris climate agreement</a>.

Developing countries, led by Ecuador, repeatedly pressed the issue of conflict of interest.

"We need a set of rules and principles and procedures to avoid and manage a potential conflict of interest between certain actors and the purpose of the convention and the Paris Agreement," said <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gawW1rRDpXM&feature=youtu.be&list=PL-m2oy1bnLzow2vo141_sYHHyGnXZGPhJ" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Walter Schuldt,</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gawW1rRDpXM&feature=youtu.be&list=PL-m2oy1bnLzow2vo141_sYHHyGnXZGPhJ" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> Ecuador's chief negotiator</a>.

But the idea of clamping down met resistance from corporate lobbyists and from rich nations, including the United States.

The conference also offered an opportunity for Trigg Talley, the lead U.S. delegate, to make clear to the rest of the world that the Trump administration <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052017/donald-trump-climate-change-paris-climate-agreement-china-eu" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">is actively reviewing many climate policies</a> and does not currently plan on further contributing to the Green Climate Fund, which supports developing nations' efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

U.S. officials remained quiet about the Trump administration's plans for the U.S. role in the Paris Agreement; <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05052017/paris-agreement-climate-change-donald-trump-jared-kushner-steve-bannon-clean-power-plan" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">White House advisors have been arguing</a> over whether to exit the accord or stay in but let the U.S. targets slide. Delegates from developing nations repeatedly criticized the notion of backsliding. "The Paris Agreement is our lifeline ... 2018 needs to trigger enhanced ambition for climate action if the Paris Agreement's goals are to remain achievable," an Ethiopian delegate, speaking on behalf of a group of nations that are highly vulnerable to climate change, <a href="http://www.thecvf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Final-CVF-Statement-Bonn-May-2017.pdf" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">said in a statement delivered in Bonn</a>.

The influence-peddling discussions gained a little ground by publicizing efforts of developing countries and environmental groups that have long complained about the sway that companies that benefit from emitting carbon pollution have in policy talks to curb such pollution.

"We would have loved an explicit conflict-of-interest policy," <a href="https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/jesse-bragg" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Jesse Bragg</a>, a spokesman for the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, told InsideClimate News. But "the fact that we were able to hold on to this call for submissions [and] able to make sure that we could continue to have this discussion in this space, it's a huge win for the campaign, for people and for the future implementation of the Paris agreement."

Johanna Gusman offered a parallel perspective. She is involved in the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a campaign to reduce tobacco use worldwide. "From our experience in dealing with the tobacco industry, policymakers need not question the lengths that certain trans-national corporations will go in protecting financial interests over interests they may claim to support that are public goods," Gusman said in Bonn.

"Within the context of the UNFCCC ... perhaps this means considering limiting the role of certain corporations that themselves drive the very climate crisis that the convention aims to stop," she said.

Australia and other developed countries, however, passionately defended the inclusion of businesses in the climate talks, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/07/marrakech-climate-talks-giving-the-fossil-fuel-lobby-a-seat-at-the-table" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">they had done in similar conversations at last year's meeting</a>.

"This idea of excluding groups such as the private sector I think fundamentally misunderstands the concept of conflict of interest,"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gawW1rRDpXM&feature=youtu.be&list=PL-m2oy1bnLzow2vo141_sYHHyGnXZGPhJ" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> said Patrick Suckling, Australia's ambassador for the environment</a>. "Business has a very important view. Business will drive and is driving the technology, the investment, the transformation in a very fundamental and very significant way."

Opening discussions on conflict of interest also raises questions: Should just fossil fuel companies be excluded from the policy talks? What about renewable energy companies and agriculture giants?

Corporate Accountability International's Bragg thinks the answer is clear: "The best way to do this is to make sure that industries that have an interest, a financial interest, in the outcomes of this process have no seat at the table. Period."

But others are not so sure.

"In general, it is a good idea to take into account the perspectives of all stakeholders while crafting a robust response to climate change—including all businesses, investors, cities and civil society," <a href="http://www.wri.org/profile/paula-caballero" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paula Caballero</a>, global director of the World Resource Institute's climate program, said in a statement. "If stakeholders were excluded from the UN climate talks, negotiators would be operating in a self-imposed bubble. The fact is that delegates will need to manage a wide range of interests when they return to their capitals where no such separation exists."

There's also concern among some advocacy groups that guidelines and rules on conflict of interest could possibly lead to some advocacy and research groups being excluded from the table.

...

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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/fortune-500-companies-tell-trump-dont-abandon-paris-climate-agreement">http://www.alternet.org/environment/fortune-500-companies-tell-trump-dont-abandon-paris-climate-agreement</a>

Fortune 500 Companies Tell Trump: Don't Abandon Paris Climate Agreement

The so-called "pro-business" president is isolating himself from a big segment of the corporate community due to his climate denial.

By Lauren Hepler / GreenBiz May 16, 2017

First, it was a full-page ad in The New York Times signed by companies such as Apple, Morgan Stanley and Unilever. Then came the letter from 214 institutional investors with a combined $15 trillion in assets. By May 9, Tiffany & Co. had tweeted a message of support, in its signature robin's egg blue.

"We're still in," began the famed jeweler's campaign to back the Paris climate agreement.

Tiffany strongly supports keeping the U.S. in the #ParisAgreement.

Brokered in its namesake city in 2015 to establish global emissions-reduction targets and limit rising average temperatures, the Paris Agreement is one of many Obama-era efforts in the crosshairs for U.S. President Donald Trump. It's a stance that's not going over well with some Fortune 500 companies, financiers, investors and others who say the U.S. should be doing more to expedite the growth of clean energy and other low-carbon technologies in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

On May 9, the groups got their wish— for now—when White House spokesman Sean Spicer announced that the president had postponed his decision until after the G7 summit, slated for May 26-27 in Italy.

"We hear reports coming from inside the White House about the division among the administration," said Edward Cameron, managing director at BSR, and head of policy for corporate climate advocacy consortium We Mean Business, which formed in the run-up to the COP21 United Nations climate talks that produced the Paris Agreement; BSR is a member of the coalition. "It's very, very difficult to gauge who has the upper hand."

Although many businesses vocally supporting the Paris Agreement have been buying renewable energy or backing environmental causes for years, the at-times confusing back and forth over the future of U.S. involvement in global climate goals is no routine matter. In addition to the U.S. being a key funder of the $100 billion-a-year global climate fund planned to mitigate impacts in developing countries, those urging Trump not to back out of the deal say that the administration risks undermining its broader credibility as a political and economic powerhouse.

"The sad fact is that the Trump administration is isolating itself from the mainstream," said Aron Cramer, president and CEO of BSR. "It's isolating itself from the national security community. It's isolating itself from the business community. It's isolating itself from investors, and it's isolating itself from scientific consensus."

How we got here, though, hasn't always been easy to follow. The administration's approach to the Paris deal has shifted several times in recent days—to say nothing of other simmering environmental concerns, such as protection for federal land or funding for climate data collection.

On May 8, it looked as if the U.S. was down to a final 24 hours as a signatory to the Paris Agreement. By early the following day, it seemed the White House and Trump would make their move on the climate pact before the G7 summit. The timeline had shifted again on May 9 to a decision after the convening of the global economic powers in a few weeks.

"Let’s just say it’s a dynamic environment," Cramer said. "It’s a little hard to predict when decisions will get made, how they’ll get made and, quite frankly, who the ultimate decision maker is."

Raising the stakes

For a brand built on adventures in exotic cold-weather destinations, a desire to "protect our outdoor playground" is only natural, according to The North Face Senior Sustainability Manager James Rogers.

Executives at the company have for years penned op-eds, signed off on group climate advocacy letters and backed in-house efforts such as outfitting the company's Bay Area headquarters with a 1-megawatt solar array. With the Paris Agreement on the chopping block, however, Rogers said leadership has stepped up calls and e-mails to lawmakers. North Face parent company VF Corp. also signed onto the six-figure newspaper ad campaign coordinated by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and Ceres.

And anxiety about political or consumer backlash?

"There’s always the potential for something like that, and it’s definitely a concern," Rogers said. "This is such a pressing issue that we realized, especially [last] week, that we needed to act, and we needed to act quickly."

Cameron said We Mean Business also has seen other companies strive to balance public calls for the agreement to remain in force with behind-the-scenes lobbying. Among the political battles playing out in Washington, he said, are divergent viewpoints on just how time-consuming, costly or legally complex withdrawing from the deal would be.

Across industries, he said companies have different rationales for getting more involved in policy advocacy that once might have been considered well outside the scope of day-to-day business.

"If you’re a food company, you know that climate change impacts your soil," Cameron said. "In some cases, it's reputational benefit or harm. In some cases, it's worker recruiting and retention."

For Cramer, the scale of companies involved in the discussion about the future of the Paris Agreement is also notable. Ultimately, he argued, what happens with the climate deal could affect U.S. global standing on other issues.

"This is not Ben and Jerry's," Cramer said. "This is not a fringe movement."

Tiffany's campaign, for instance, aims "to reach decision makers directly with a message from Tiffany and from large U.S. businesses to voice our support for acting on climate change and remaining in the Paris Agreement," Anisa Kamadoli Costa, the company's chief sustainability officer, told GreenBiz.

Individual companies aside, Cramer said the White House risks snubbing national security agencies that have endorsed renewable energy as one strategy to bolster the resilience of the power grid, as well as investors and big banks attracted to financial opportunities embedded in the deal.

Merrill Lynch, for instance, estimates that it would take $900 billion a year to scale clean-energy infrastructure fast enough to limit global average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, a common U.N. metric for averting catastrophic fallout from climate change. In 2016, global clean energy investments fell to $287 billion from the record investment of $348 billion invested in 2015, Bloomberg research shows.

While the future of the Paris Agreement hangs in the balance, Cramer said interested companies also would be wise to stay appraised of other environmental policy changes trickling out of the White House and Capitol Hill.

"Business is and should keep an eye on all of it," he said. "There is a very broad assault on a number of environmental steps that are actually very important to building a 21st-century economy."

This article was originally published by Greenbiz. Read the original.

Lauren Hepler is associate editor at GreenBiz Group. She has covered urban development, technology and public policy for Slate magazine, Congressional Quarterly, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and OpenSecrets.org.

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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-bogus-reason-bailing-paris-agreement">http://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-bogus-reason-bailing-paris-agreement</a>

Trump looks as if he is preparing to pull out of the Paris Agreement. After months of delayed and rescheduled meetings on the topic, the administration has suggested it will make its official decision this week about whether or not to stay in the global pact, which encourages almost 200 nations to cut their climate-change causing emissions. Reports indicate that things aren’t looking good for team “stay.”

Lead by Steve Bannon, White House counsel Don McGahn and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, a faction of Trumpworld <a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/05/03/stories/1060053976" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">has successfully made the case to the president</a> that the US should quit the deal, according to reports. If the US stays in the pact but pursues Trump’s agenda of fossil-fuel industry boosterism, the US could be in hot water legally, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/02/paris-climate-trump-237905" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">they argue</a>.

President Barack Obama promised to cut US emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels. Because Trump is unwinding many of Obama’s climate change-related programs, emissions are likely to fall under Trump by only 14 percent, according to an <a href="http://rhg.com/notes/trumps-regulatory-rollback-begins" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">analysis by the Rhodium Group</a>. McGahn and other anti-Paris advisers argue that under the agreement, the US could somehow face legal action if it does not meet Obama’s promises.

But nearly all diplomats and legal scholars who worked on the deal believe that’s not correct. The Paris Agreement is not legally binding. Over the last week, lawyers and the architects of the deal have parsed its language once more and concluded that the US can revise its emissions-cutting promise at any time, upward or downward, and nothing will happen.

The debate is centered around one line in <a href="https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/paris_agreement_english.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">article 4.11 of the agreement</a>. It states that “a party may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition.”

The consensus is, resoundingly, that these words do not require emissions targets to increase. “It came up,” Todd Stern, Obama’s chief climate diplomat, <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/7/15554286/paris-climate-accord-exit-bannon" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">told Vox’s David Roberts</a>. “It was discussed and debated. There were countries that were saying they wanted a legal prohibition of any downward revision of an NDC. We thought that was a bad idea. It would cause any number of countries to lowball their target out of fear of getting stuck.”

The authors of the deal intentionally left out punishments for a nation that decided to be less ambitious. Indeed, this was one of scientists and activists’ chief criticisms of the agreement, which they denounced as toothless.

Other climate law scholars agree with Stern. “Withdrawal of the Clean Power Plan, adoption of an alternative domestic strategy or failure to achieve the US emissions reduction target would not violate the agreement,” wrote Susan Biniaz, a former State Department adviser, and Daniel Bodansky, a law professor at Arizona State University, in <a href="https://www.c2es.org/docUploads/legal-issues-related-paris-agreement-05-17.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">a recent analysis of legal issues</a> related to the Paris Agreement. In other words, <a href="http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2017/05/04/to-withdraw-from-paris-or-not-to-withdraw-from-paris-thinking-through-some-of-the-legal-implications/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Columbia University Law Professor Michael Burger summarizes</a>, “remaining in the Paris Agreement does not increase litigation risk for the Trump administration as it pursues its deregulatory agenda.” Trump and his deputies can do whatever they want with regard to the US’ climate change-causing emissions without facing legal ramifications.

Last Thursday, Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who worked on the agreement, <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060054040" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">provided what sounded like a dissenting voice to E&E News</a>, arguing that under the deal a country is not allowed to decrease its commitment. “The sense of the direction is really progress; it’s not going backwards,” she said. But she later argued that her comments had been misinterpreted. “To be super clear: US gov CAN legally downsize NDC but politically they should not,” <a href="https://twitter.com/LaurenceTubiana/status/860140775031672832" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">she tweeted</a>. An “NDC” is a nationally determined contribution, that’s the Paris Agreement’s term for a nation’s promise under the agreement.

Foreign leaders, corporations, investors and activists have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/07/trump-climate-change-officials-worried" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">pushing hard</a> to keep the Trump administration in the pact by arguing that the US has nothing to lose by staying.

Its unclear, however, if the administration is willing to listen.

The president’s advisers will meet tomorrow afternoon to come to a final decision about the Paris Agreement. Someone close to Ivanka Trump <a href="https://www.axios.com/ivanka-to-meet-epa-administrator-before-crucial-paris-climate-meeting-2392605333.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">leaked that the president’s daughter</a>, a proponent of staying in the deal, would meet one-on-one with Scott Pruitt before the larger meeting. The implication in Axios reporter Jonathan Swan’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/ivanka-to-meet-epa-administrator-before-crucial-paris-climate-meeting-2392605333.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">piece about the leak</a> is that Ivanka hopes to change the EPA administrator’s mind. Her desire to keep the US in the agreement is shared by a number of Trump advisers, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn and military leaders including national security adviser H.R. MacMaster....

==

<a href="https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement">https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement</a>

We, the undersigned, write in enthusiastic support of your campaign commitments to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.  We were heartened by the comments you made at your 100-day rally in Harrisburg and agree that the treaty is not in the interest of the American people and the U. S. should therefore not be a party to it.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty is an integral part of your energy agenda.  The Obama administration’s Nationally Determined Contribution (or NDC) to the Paris Climate Treaty commits the United States to take actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.  Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity.

The NDC cites specific policies undertaken by the Obama administration as part of the NDC.  These include: the greenhouse gas emissions rules for existing (the “Clean Power” Plan) and new power plants; Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles; methane emissions rules for the oil and gas sector and for landfills; and energy efficiency and conservation standards for buildings and appliances.

Environmental pressure groups and several state attorneys general have begun to prepare lawsuits in federal court to block withdrawal of the “Clean Power” Plan and other greenhouse gas rules.  One argument that they have already put forward is that these rules cannot be withdrawn because they are part of our international commitment under the Paris Climate Treaty.  Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk.  The AGs revealed in a recruiting letter that they also plan other lawsuits “ensuring that the promises made in Paris become reality.”

Some officials in your administration are relying on recent statements from former Obama administration officials that the U. S. can withdraw its NDC and submit a new NDC that makes far less ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The clear language of Article 4 of the Paris Climate Treaty contradicts that claim.  Section 11 states: “A Party may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition” (emphasis added).

Even if the U. S. were to be cleared by UN officials to submit a less ambitious NDC, this is not the end of the threats posed by the Paris Climate Treaty to your pro-energy agenda and to the economic future of our country.  Article 4 requires each party to submit a more ambitious NDC at least every five years in perpetuity.  This commitment to reduce fossil fuel use every five years cannot be wished away by those who argue that the U. S. should keep a seat at the negotiating table in order to advocate for fossil fuels.

In urging you to keep your campaign commitment, we recognize that there are several options for you to withdraw the U.S. from Paris.  Of the three options listed below, we think the first two are preferable to the third.

First, you could submit the Paris Climate Treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent with a recommendation that the treaty not be ratified.  Submitting the treaty to the Senate would return us to and restore the proper constitutional method for treaty-making and require a future administration to go through proper procedures if it were to attempt to rejoin the treaty.

Second, you could withdraw from the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  This action would also achieve your commitment to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to UN global warming programs,” including the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC.

Third, you could announce your intention to withdraw the U. S. from the Paris Climate Treaty according to the four-year schedule specified in the treaty and continue the process of repealing the regulations that the previous administration submitted as part of its NDC.  This option is the least preferable because it runs the risk of legitimizing the Obama administration’s false claim that the treaty is merely an executive agreement.

The undersigned organizations believe that withdrawing completely from Paris is a key part of your plan to protect U.S. energy producers and manufacturers from regulatory warfare not just for the next four years but also for decades to come.  We will strongly support your decision to keep your campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty.

Sincerely,

</div>

Myron Ebell, Director, Center for Energy and Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Thomas J. Pyle, President, American Energy Alliance

Joseph Bast, President, The Heartland Institute

Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform

Chrissy Harbin, Vice President of External Affairs, Americans for Prosperity

Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America

Michael Costigan, Senior Advisor, Strategic Outreach, The Heritage Foundation

James L. Martin, Founder and Chairman, 60 Plus Association

Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

David Ridenour, President, National Center for Public Policy Research

Thomas Schatz, President, Citizens Against Government Waste

Craig Richardson, President, Energy and Environment Legal Institute

Tom DeWeese, President, American Policy Center

Richard Manning, President, Americans for Limited Government

Phil Kerpen, President, American Commitment

David Williams, President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Mario H. Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund

David Bozell, President, For America

Steven J. Allen, Vice President and Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center

Kenneth Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Craig D. Idso, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

William Happer, President, The CO2 Coalition

E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

John Droz, Jr., Founder, Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions

Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, Center for Individual Freedom

Peter J. Thomas, Chairman, Americans for Constitutional Liberty

Ed Martin, President, Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund

Amy Oliver Cooke, Executive Vice President, Independence Institute (CO)

David T. Stevenson, Director, Center for Energy Competitiveness, Caesar Rodney Institute (DE)

Paul Gessing, President, Rio Grande Foundation

Kory Swanson, President and CEO, John Locke Foundation

Francis De Luca, President, Civitas Institute

Forest Thigpen, President, Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Eldon Alexander, President, Faith and Freedom Foundation

Lynne Roberts, President, Americans United for Freedom

Rich Johns, President, Liberty Tree Alliance

Aileen Milton, President, The Villages Tea Party

Debbie Gunnoe, President, Navarre Patriots

Sam Mullins, Co-Founder, Santa Rosa Tea Party Patriots

Hon. Mike Hill, Founder, Northwest Florida Tea Party

Stephani Scruggs Bowen, COO, Coalition for a Strong America

Alan Moran, Director, Australian Environment Foundation

Eunie Smith, President, Eagle Forum

Norm Singleton, President, Campaign for Liberty

</div>

=

===

<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/10/conservative-groups-pushing-trump-exit-paris-deal-have-taken-millions-koch-brothers-and-exxon">https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/10/conservative-groups-pushing-trump-exit-paris-deal-have-taken-millions-koch-brothers-and-exxon</a>

The “conservative groups” urging President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement have accepted tens of millions of dollars from groups linked to the billionaire petrochemical brothers Charles and David Koch, ExxonMobil, and the Mercer family.

More than 40 groups have co-signed an <a href="https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">open letter </a>urging Trump to keep his campaign promise and “withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty.”

The groups, including the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/competitive-enterprise-institute" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI), <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">The Heartland Institute</a>, and the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>, claim failing to withdraw from the treaty could put Trump’s policy agenda of promoting fossil fuels at risk.

The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wont-make-decision-on-paris-climate-accord-until-later-this-month-1494356353" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Wall Street Journal</a> has quoted a White House spokesperson saying the president will not make a decision on the Paris agreement until after meeting G-7 leaders later this month.

Analysis carried out by DeSmog and the <a href="https://climateinvestigations.nationbuilder.com/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Climate Investigations Center (CIC)</a> shows many of the groups signing the letter have taken multi-million dollar donations from groups tied to the Koch brothers, who own <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Koch Industries</a>. Several of the groups have accepted cash from oil giant <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">ExxonMobil while many also deny the basic science</a> linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

In the letter, the groups say Trump should withdraw from the Paris deal and “stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs” — two promises made by Trump during his campaign.

<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Paris Deal</h3>

As part of the Paris deal, agreed to by almost 200 countries as part of the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.S. pledged in a document known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, based on their levels in 2005.

“Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity,” the groups write.

The letter says environment groups and some attorneys general are using court action to try and protect the Obama era’s Clean Power Plan that sought to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The U.S. participation in the Paris deal is being cited in these lawsuits, the groups claim.

“Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk,” the letter claims.

Right-wing media outlets including <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/08/forty-conservative-groups-urge-trump-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-treaty/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Breitbart</a> and <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/conservatives-urge-trump-to-keep-his-promise-ditch-the-paris-climate-agreement/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">The Daily Caller</a> have been reporting the letter from conservative groups without mentioning the known links to the Koch brothers and to their denial of the science of climate change.

The DeSmog and CIC analysis, using publicly available IRS disclosures, shows the Koch brothers have donated at least $6.9 million to the groups, much of which went to the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>. Exxon donated about $5.9 million to the groups since the late 1990s.

Several of the letter signers had roles in Trump’s various transition teams, including the CEI’s <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/myron-ebell" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Myron Ebell</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/thomas-pyle" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Thomas Pyle</a> of the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">American Energy Alliance</a>.

In 2014, Freedom Partners (FP) — a group once described as the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/behind-the-curtain-exclusive-the-koch-brothers-secret-bank-096669#ixzz2hj4y5I8o" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Koch brothers secret bank</a> — <a href="http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/453/453732750/453732750_201412_990O.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">gave some $16 million</a> to <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Americans for Prosperity</a>, another of the letter’s signatories. FP also gave $2.3 miilion to the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">American Energy Alliance</a>.

<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Denial Dollars</h3>

But as well as accepting millions of dollars from vested interests such as the Kochs and Exxon over the years, another thing the groups have in common is their denial of the clear science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change — an issue backed by all the major scientific academies around the world.

The analysis shows groups have also accepted about $80 million through two linked funding organisations — <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/donors-capital-fund" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Donors Capital Fund</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/who-donors-trust" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Donors Trust</a> — that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">academics have confirmed</a> is a key financial source for many U.S. climate science denial groups.

The Koch brothers, through a funding group known as the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/knowledge-and-progress-fund" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Knowledge and Progress Fund</a> (KPF), gave more than $7.6 million to the Donors Trust since 2010. The only grants made by the KPF over that period were to Donors Trust.

The Heartland Institute, which has been given more than <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/03/27/trump-kingmakers-rebekah-and-robert-mercer-heartland-institute-s-climate-science-denial-conference" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">$5 million in recent years by major Trump financier Robert Mercer</a>, is known for organizing regular conferences where climate science denialists gather.

In the run-up to one conference in May 2012, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150219195059/http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/05/03/do-you-still-believe-global-warming-billboards-hit-chicago" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Heartland said in a statement</a>: “The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Another signer to the letter is Professor <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">William Happer</a>, the president of the CO2 Coalition — a group that emerged from the disbanded <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/george-c-marshall-institute" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">George C. Marshall Institute.</a>

The <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/co2-coalition" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">CO2 Coalition</a> denies the evidence that humans are causing dangerous climate change and runs with the tag line “CO2 — Essential for Life.”

Happer, thought to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-science-adviser-william-happer-hanging-around-with-conspiracy-theorists" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">in the running as Trump’s science adviser</a>, has compared what he called the “demonization” of CO2, to the “<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/02/25/trump-potential-science-adviser-will-happer-carbon-dioxide-demonized-jews" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">demonization of poor Jews under Hitler</a>.”

==

==

<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20032017/paris-climate-agreement-donald-trump-global-warming-clean-power-plan">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20032017/paris-climate-agreement-donald-trump-global-warming-clean-power-plan</a>

==

==

President-elect Donald Trump is seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying broad global backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Since Trump's election victory on Tuesday, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris agreement during climate talks involving 200 nations set to run until Friday in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Trump has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement, which was strongly supported by outgoing Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama.

Trump's advisers are considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source, who works on Trump's transition team for international energy and climate policy.

"It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election" on Tuesday, the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Paris accord won enough backing for entry into force on Nov. 4, four days before the election.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday in New Zealand the Obama administration would do everything it could to implement the Paris accord before Trump takes office.

The accord says in its Article 28 that any country wanting to pull out after signing on has to wait four years. In theory, the earliest date for withdrawal would be Nov. 4, 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election.

The source said the future Trump administration is weighing alternatives to accelerate the pull-out: sending a letter withdrawing from the 1992 international framework accord that is the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement; voiding U.S. involvement in both in a year's time; or issuing a presidential order simply deleting the U.S. signature from the Paris accord.

Withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be controversial, partly because it was signed by former Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and approved by the U.S. Senate. The action also could antagonize many other countries. [L8N1DB41L]

The UNFCCC sets a goal of avoiding "dangerous" man-made damage to the climate to avert more heat waves, downpours, floods, extinctions of animals and plants and rising sea levels.

The 2015 Paris Agreement is much more explicit, seeking to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of the century and limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

Many nations have expressed hope that the United States will stay. But the host of the current round of climate negotiations, Morocco, said the pact that seeks to phase out greenhouse gases in the second half of the century was strong enough to survive a pullout.

One party deciding to withdraw would not call the agreement into question, Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar told a news conference.

In Beijing on Monday, the foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told a regular news briefing that China would like to continue working with all countries, including the United States, in the global fight against climate change.

The agreement was reached by almost 200 nations in December and, as of Saturday, has been formally ratified by 109 representing 76 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States with 18 percent.

The accord seeks to limit rising temperatures that have been linked to increasing economic damage from desertification, extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels.

U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa declined to comment on the Trump source's remarks to Reuters.

"The Paris Agreement carries an enormous amount of weight and credibility," Espinosa told a news conference.

She said the United Nations hoped for a strong and constructive relationship with Trump.

The Trump source said the president-elect's transition team is aware of the likely international backlash but said Republicans in the U.S. Congress have given ample warning that a Republican administration would take action to reverse course.

"The Republican Party on multiple occasions has sent signals to the international community signaling that it doesn't agree with the pact. We've gone out of our way to give notice," the source said.

The source blamed Obama for joining up by an executive order, without getting approval from the U.S. Senate.

"There wouldn't be this diplomatic fallout on the broader international agenda if Obama hadn't rushed the adoption," the source said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climatechange-accord-idUSKBN1370JX

==

ebell: A former top aide to Donald Trump says the president will "definitely" pull out of the Paris climate deal. Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s transition efforts for the Environmental Protection Agency, also said Monday that climate and environmental activists are "the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world."

==

<h3 class="yiv8435460958null" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1474476672540_2546" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding-inline-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: bold; display: block; font-style: normal; line-height: 22.5px; letter-spacing: -0.5px; text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://ecowatch.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=ef59b5e047&e=c2e8fdabfa" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1474476672540_2545" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; background: transparent; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word; font-weight: bold;">60 Countries Representing 48% of Emissions Have Officially Joined Paris Climate Agreement</a></h3>

<span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1474476672540_2543" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon hosted a special event at which 31 countries officially joined the...

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<a href="http://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-ken-berlin-president-ceo-climate-reality-project-us-china-paris-agreement">http://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-ken-berlin-president-ceo-climate-reality-project-us-china-paris-agreement</a>

“Nearly two years ago, the United States and China stood shoulder to shoulder to proclaim their commitment to solving climate change, kickstarting the process that culminated in a worldwide climate agreement in Paris. Now, the world’s two largest emitters and two largest economies have taken the next step by formally joining the Paris Agreement. This continued cooperation and leadership on the eve of the gathering of the G20 sets a bold precedent for the rest of the world’s major economies to follow and highlights the interrelationship between expanding economic prosperity and solving the climate crisis. Now it’s time for the rest of the world to follow the US and China, formally accept the Paris Agreement, and get to the hard work of implementing and increasing their commitments to solving climate change.”

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<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/trump-wants-renegotiate-paris-climate-deal">http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/trump-wants-renegotiate-paris-climate-deal</a>

If elected president, Donald Trump would pull the United States out of the commitments it made <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/12/breaking-news-paris-climate-agreement" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">recently in Paris to fight climate change</a>, according to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-climate-exclusive-idUSKCN0Y82NW?mod=related&channelName=politicsNews" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">a new interview with Reuters</a>—a move that could deal a fatal blow to the landmark agreement.

"I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else," the New York real estate mogul said in an interview with Reuters.

"But those agreements are one-sided agreements and they are bad for the United States."

Trump said he did not believe China, the world's top emitter of the carbon dioxide gas that many scientists believe is contributing to global climate change, would adhere to its pledge under the Paris deal.

</blockquote>

The deal, which the Obama administration plans to formally join by the end of the year, aims to limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Needless to say, the plan would crumble if the US—the world's second-biggest carbon dioxide emitter after China—were to back out.

Trump's criticism of China, although commonplace among Republican climate change deniers, is debatable. Chinese diplomats <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/obama-just-announced-historic-climate-deal-china" target="blank">worked closely with White House officials</a> in developing the Paris Agreement. Chinese investment in clean energy technology <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/11/china-absolutely-destroying-us-clean-energy" target="blank">vastly outpaces</a> that of the US, and some energy analysts think China could actually be on track to <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/03/china-emissions-peak-new-report" target="_blank">outperform</a> the climate targets it agreed to in Paris.

Still, it could be a noteworthy concession from Trump that he wants to "renegotiate," rather than abandon the plan completely. He's previously said global warming "<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/donald-trump-science-climate-change-vaccines-autism-ebola" target="_blank">was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive</a>."

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trexler climate web

<a href="http://climatographer.com/paris-agreement/">http://climatographer.com/paris-agreement/</a>

<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/26/investment-renewables-cleantech/">http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/26/investment-renewables-cleantech/</a>

sim widget/

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/paris-agreement-signing-earth-day

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">terror attack? march cancelled by gov</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.desmog.ca/2015/12/10/canada-intervenes-keep-human-and-indigenous-rights-climate-treaty-during-final-hours-paris-negotiations">http://www.desmog.ca/2015/12/10/canada-intervenes-keep-human-and-indigenous-rights-climate-treaty-during-final-hours-paris-negotiations</a></div>

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/08/climate-denialists-paris-claim-they-are-being-shut-out-while-shutting-out-journalists

Professional climate science deniers and delayers have been busy playing the victim card here at the Paris climate change talks.

As we head into the guts of week two, negotiators at the vast Le Bourget venue are heading into the business end of agreeing a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

In The Australian, environment editor Graham Lloyd wrote under the headline “<a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8pJsPiVyaZAJ:www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/paris-climate-talks-greens-want-muzzle-on-climate-deniers/news-story/4ccecc011cf6053b88abf076f598f74d+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers</a>’” how environment groups wanted “alternative views on climate science silenced in Paris.”

That’s an interesting choice of phrase - alternative view. Try, wrong. There are some people in the world with an “alternative view” on the age and the shape of the planet, or the theory of evolution and the safety of vaccines.

But you wouldn’t expect them to be taken seriously at a major medical conference or the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

<a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-skeptics-idUKKBN0TQ2F220151208" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">Reuters</a> also had a story where Heartland Institute communications director Jim Lakely complained that they had to “make their own space and time” to be heard in Paris.  Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow's Marc Morano complained to <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-cop21-paris-skeptics-deniers-lomborg-morano-inhofe/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">Politico</a> that the UN saw the denialists as the “turd in the punch bowl”.

The Heartland Institute, which received $736,000 from Exxon between 1998 and 2006, is ever keen to promote climate science denial, holding annual conferences in the US and abroad, launching “alternative” climate reports and comparing anyone who accepts climate science to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-institute-global-warming-murder" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">tyrants and murderers</a>.

So are climate science denialists and “sceptics” really excluded from the United Nations climate process?

The Committee for Constructive Tomorrow has been granted official press conference time and space at previous climate talks in Lima, Warsaw, Durban, Doha and Bonn.

CFACT communications director Marc Morano, who launched his Climate Hustle denialist documentary in Paris on Tuesday evening, told me they have a press conference planned within the Paris talks, in an official room, for later this week. CFACT has also had an official booth at the Paris talks.

The United Nations has also granted official delegate status to representatives from CFACT and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another US conservative think tank that refuses to accept the evidence of the severe implications of fossil fuel emissions.

Yet while the likes of CFACT and Heartland cry wolf over their victim status, there’s an apparent hypocrisy in their claims.

When CFACT joined other groups in a room at the aptly-titled Hotel California (as the Eagles sang, ‘what a nice surprise, bring your alibis’) for a day of denialist speeches, the event was initially advertised as being public.

But when <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/07/heartland-institute-kicks-journalists-out-public-climate-denial-press-conference-paris" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">journalists from DeSmog</a> turned up, the event suddenly became private and the journalists were excluded.

I had initially been granted a seat for the premiere of the Climate Hustle documentary, but was later declined.  At the screening event last night (more information about that quite bizarre experience to come), I asked again to be allowed in, but was told it was full.

Dr John Cook, a climate communication fellow at the University of Queensland and founder of the SkepticalScience website, was also told he wouldn’t be allowed to actually watch the film, after initially expecting to be allowed in.

The ideologically-motivated climate science denial that Heartland and CFACT promotes cuts no ice here inside the Paris talks. But that’s not to say it has no impact.

Writing in the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/125254/climate-change-deniers-try-derail-paris-talks" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">New Republic</a>, Jonathan Katz points out how the Republican party’s denial of the science in the US could impact on the negotiations. Negotiators, Katz argues, “know better than anyone that the Republican Congress will not approve any climate change deal President Barack Obama puts in front of them.”

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, and other congressional Republicans, are signalling a lack of support for the climate talks.

Don’t trust the United States: as the international climate summit in Paris grinds along, this is the message Republicans in Congress are trying to send the delegates. The logic, such as it is, of the claim is that merely by making it the House G.O.P. goes a long way toward proving its validity.

On Tuesday, at a news conference in Paris, President Barack Obama exhorted negotiators to keep in mind what is at stake at the summit. “This one trend—climate change—affects all trends,” Obama said. “This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now.”

Even as he spoke, congressional Republicans were doing their best to undermine him. That same day, the House approved two resolutions aimed at blocking regulations to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. The first would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing rules aimed at cutting emissions from new power plants; the second would prevent the agency from enforcing rules targeted at existing power plants. Together, these rules are known as the Clean Power Plan, and they are crucial to the Americans’ negotiating position in Paris. (The Clean Power Plan is central to the United States’ pledge, made in advance of the summit, to cut its emissions by twenty-six per cent.) The House votes, which followed Senate approval of similar resolutions back in November, were, at least according to some members, explicitly aimed at subverting the talks. Lawmakers want to “send a message to the climate conference in Paris that in America, there’s serious disagreement with the policies of this president,” Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, explained.

As a practical matter, the importance of the votes is probably minimal. Obama has already threatened to veto the resolutions if they reach his desk, and there isn’t enough support for them for an override. But the resolutions are not the only trick congressional Republicans have up their collective sleeves. President Obama has pledged three billion dollars to what’s known as the Green Climate Fund. The fund is intended to help developing countries cope with climate change and also to adopt clean-energy systems. In a just world, three billion dollars is far less than the U.S. should be contributing; Republicans are threatening to block even that contribution. Leaving the fund under-financed increases the chance that poorer countries will walk away from any proposed accord.

Meanwhile, the impossibility of getting an agreement ratified by the U.S. Senate puts yet another constraint on negotiations. While many countries are pushing for a legally binding treaty, the Obama Administration is insisting on a sort of legal chimera—partly binding, partly not—so that, if there is a pact, it won’t require Senate approval. (The Washington Post has a good rundown on this particular problem.)

That Republicans would try to undercut the Administration’s efforts to do something—anything—to reduce carbon emissions is no surprise. Willful ignorance about climate change has become a point of pride among elected officials in the G.O.P. Recently, the Associated Press asked a panel of eight scientists to assess the accuracy of Presidential candidates’ tweets on climate change using a scale of zero to a hundred. (The tweets were shown to the scientists without the candidates’ names, to guard against bias.) All nine of the Republican candidates graded got failing scores. Donald Trump, for instance, received a fifteen, while Ben Carson got a thirteen and Ted Cruz a six. “This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, who served as one of the judges, wrote of Cruz’s statements. “That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president.”

But if the recent votes aren’t surprising, they’re still discouraging. They demonstrate, once again, the power of defeatist thinking. Congressional Republicans rail against the federal government; then, with their own antics, confirm their worst criticisms. (Who, nowadays, would make the case that Americans should have faith in Washington?) The G.O.P. says that America can’t be depended on to live up to its commitments, and, by saying so, achieves its objective, which is sowing mistrust. The best that can be hoped for during the next week in Paris is that the rest of the world ignores the U.S.’s Republican leaders. Would that we had that luxury here at home.

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<div>With less than one week before the Paris climate talks (COP21), Corporate Accountability International (CAI) released a report</div>

<div>exposing the “filthy” track record of some of the corporations sponsoring the talks.</div>

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<div>The report, Fueling the Fire: The corporate sponsors bankrolling COP21, uncovers “the green veil of four of the meeting’s dirtiest</div>

<div>sponsors,” including fossil fuel conglomerates Engie (formerly GDF Suez), Suez Environment, BNP Paribas and French utility</div>

<div>Électricité de France (EDF).</div>

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</div>

<div>The organization argues that there is an inherent conflict of interest between the stated aims of the UN climate process and many</div>

<div>of COP21’s corporate sponsors given their roles as global carbon polluters.</div>

<div>Together, these four corporate sponsors represent direct ownership of and/or investments in more than 46 coalfired power</div>

<div>plants, exploration of tar sands in Canada, fracking in the UK and India, over €30 billion invested in the French coal industry and</div>

<div>more than 200 megatons of CO2equivalent emissions.</div>

<div>CAI argues that “by detailing the corporations’ abuses to the environment and aggressive lobbying to undermine environmental</div>

<div>policy, the report lays bare the conflict of interest inherent in allowing such sponsorship to exist.”</div>

<div>“Inviting some of the world’s biggest polluters to pay for the COP is akin to hiring a fox to guard a hen house. We must eliminate</div>

<div>this conflict of interest before the COP become corporate trade shows for false marketbased solutions,” CAI Executive Director</div>

<div>Patti Lynn said.</div>

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<div>The report details how the four sponsors have long track records of “policy interference that contradict the green public relations”</div>

<div>they advance. Whilst energy giant EDF claims to be “committed to a decarbonized world,” it is an active member—alongside</div>

<div>ExxonMobil and Shell—of the European business lobby group, BusinessEurope.</div>

<div>Indeed, BusinessEurope has a long history of being opposed to climate action. In 2010, it came second in the EU’s Worst Lobby</div>

<div>Awards. It was nominated “for its aggressive lobbying to block effective climate action in the EU while claiming to support action</div>

<div>to protect the climate.” On behalf of its members, BusinessEurope openly opposes the “market deployment of energy produced</div>

<div>from renewable sources.”</div>

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<div>The report also outlines the greenwashing covering pollution. CAI reveals that Engie “is a polluter with few rivals,” responsible for</div>

<div>more than 131 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the equivalent to pollution emitted from driving around the globe 12</div>

<div>million times.</div>

<div>“Despite recent announcements to stop new coal projects, Engie still owns 30 dirty coal power plants worldwide,” argues Célia</div>

<div>Gautier, policy advisor at Climate Action Network France. “The French state is directly responsible for Engie’s greenwashing</div>

<div>activities as it owns 33 percent of its shares and accepted to put them in their list of COP21 sponsors.”</div>

<div>BNP Paribas is one of the largest coal financiers in France. Between 2005 and 2014 the corporation provided half of the total</div>

<div>financial support (€30 billion) for the French coal industry.</div>

<div>The momentum is growing to have large polluting companies excluded from the talks. In May, more than 60 organizations</div>

<div>launched a global campaign to kick big polluters out of climate policy.</div>

<div>Using the UN legal precedent, Article 5.3 of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, they say the same should</div>

<div>happen with Big Oil and COP21.</div>

<div>So far more than 400,000 people</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-isis-wants-paris-climate-talks-fail">http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-isis-wants-paris-climate-talks-fail</a></div>

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<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/13/climate-deal-legally-binding-kerry/

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<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/12/marc-morano-s-climate-hustle-documentary-ready-paris-premiere-same-old-denial-myths" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/12/marc-morano-s-climate-hustle-documentary-ready-paris-premiere-same-old-denial-myths</a>

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<div>http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/11/agri-corporations-hijack-cop21/</div>

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<div><a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-plan-to-save-the-world/">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-plan-to-save-the-world/</a>

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<div>Big polluter nations give fossil fuel companies 10 million dollars a minute, but claim they don't have funds to aid the most vulnerable countries dealing with floods, drought and storms.

Now poorer nations say if they can't count on the aid, they can't sign up to a global climate deal. It is a deadly deadlock, but if enough of us demand they stop giving public funds to dirty energy right now, we could shift the finance to help those most in need.

Next week, 80 ministers from across the world meet to try and find a solution. Let's get one million of us behind this push -- Avaaz staff will deliver our call directly to the UK, US, Canada, Australia and others to expose the lie and shame them into action:

<a rel="nofollow" class="yiv2052550717wordwrap" target="_blank" href="https://secure.avaaz.org/en/finance_100_clean_sls/?botEzdb&v=67464" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1446751866260_47340" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline: none; white-space: pre-line; word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://secure.avaaz.org/en/finance_100_clean_sls/?botEzdb&v=67464</a>

Industrialised governments have made commitments to switch to 100% clean energy, to stop funding fossil fuels, and to provide $100 billion in climate funding per year by 2020. But if these promises aren’t tied down now, there will be no global climate deal in Paris.</div>

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