There are only 16 countries that have currently set domestic targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions that are ambitious enough to be considered in line with their pledged contributions to the Paris Agreement, according to new research published this week.
The Paris Agreement per se is useful but only if the countries recognize that this doesn’t really do anything, it doesn’t actually reduce emissions. But it is useful for all the country to say “yeah, we agree, there is a problem, we need to do something.” So that is useful. But it’s not the actions that are needed.
Dutch banking giant ING announced last week that it would begin to steer its €500 billion lending portfolio toward meeting the Paris Agreement well-below 2°C warming target, starting by committing to using science-based scenarios to direct its business strategy.
Nearly 400 investors with assets worth $32 trillion announced The Investor Agenda last week, a first-of-its-kind global agenda aimed at demonstrating and supporting investors in accelerating and scaling-up actions critical to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The current pace of global climate change remains double that of the international targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement due to a lack and speed of global action to limit its impact, according to Schroders Climate Progress Dashboard.
The General Synod of the Church of England earlier this week voted near-unanimously in favor of divesting from companies that fail to align themselves with the Paris Climate Agreement.
A new study published this week by the London School of Economics & Political Science has revealed that all 197 countries, nations, and territories that have signed and ratified the Paris Climate Agreement now all have at least one national law or policy focused on climate change.
French foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne last week told his country’s parliament that “The US knows what to expect,” and that if the US does not rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, there can be no trade deal.
In a rambling and barely coherent defence of his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, President Donald Trump has opened the door to the possibility the United States “could conceivably go back in” to the Agreement.
The Climate Action Tracker has published updated estimates of global progress towards the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and aims at keeping temperature increases below 2°C and, despite minor improvements in India and China, the gap between current policies and 2°C still looms large.
