Pakistan joins Paris agreement on climate change, becomes 104th country

Although he has moved to protect his golf course from rising sea levels, President-elect Donald Trump has sung a denialist tune about global warming.

Trump is a climate change denier, even positioning the theory that the whole notion of climate change is a “hoax” and nothing more than a ploy by China to weaken the United States economy. The non-binding global pledge was agreed to in December and commits nations to ensuring the Earth’s warming remains under 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a level climate scientists believe is necessary to ward off the worst impact of catastrophic climate change.

“We continue to welcome all climate change initiatives at the global, regional and bilateral levels, both in mitigation and adaptation actions as these initiatives will translate Pacific Island countries Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) into actions”, he said.

Joke or no joke, the evidence suggests Trump will pursue environmental policies in a starkly different manner from his predecessor.

Presenting its 12 report at the climate summit in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, Germanwatch’s Sonke Kreft said four out of the 10 most impacted countries globally are African, namely Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana and Madagascar. That means the earliest that Trump could take the USA out of the agreement would be November 4, 2020.

The Saudi delegation also reportedly objected to language about the gender dimension of climate change and the integration of the UN’s human rights convention into the Paris text. A Trump administration can fly in the face of the whole world or they can sit down and work with us. “If Trump wants to keep the global co-operation he needs to achieve his goals on trade and terrorism, he will not be able be a rogue nation on climate change“.

While the agreement’s terms mean no country can back out until late 2020 at the earliest, if the USA dropped out of the overall climate convention, that could mean cancelling their climate agreement membership by default. “And that could have the effect of scuppering the entire Paris Agreement, even without an explicit abrogation by the U.S”.

Lawrence Slade, chief executive of Energy UK which represents the UK’s Big Six energy companies, said: “The Marrakech climate talks are going on right now”.

Meanwhile Donald Trump has tweeted global warming is an “expensive hoax” and appears to have turned his focus inward to America, saying he’ll promote energy from coal and fracking to create jobs in the United States.

Amending the CPP could delay the death of the coal industry, but that death is still coming. For example, in June, Canada, Mexico, and the USA jointly announced major reductions on methane emissions as part of a broader North American climate and clean energy strategy.

With these bold steps toward a clean energy future, Morocco is pioneering a greener development and developing a cutting edge solar technology.

“Action by the global community will not stop because of the new government of the United States”. “Proactively taking action against climate change will improve China’s worldwide image and allow it to occupy the moral high ground”, Zou Ji, deputy director of the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy, told Reuters. But we will need to wait to see what the reality is.

Yet that, too, could hurt the U.S. diplomatically. It won’t be easy or quick, and much is uncertain.

“I think the most immediate thing is that he has said that the progress made under Obama will be reversed if possible for him to do that”.

Our vision of a more sustainable world now has a powerful ally: economics.