190 nations agree to strengthen Paris accord
Delegates hope to convince Trump climate change is real
MARRAKECH, Morrocco — More than 190 nations including the U.S., China and Canada vowed to step up their efforts to fight global warming despite concerns Donald Trump will pull the richest polluter out of the process when he takes office next year.
Envoys and more than 50 national leaders in Marrakech agreed Saturday to a roadmap for developing a rule book by 2018 that will strengthen the landmark Paris Agreement signed last year to limit fossil-fuel emissions and keep temperature increases to 2 C by the end of the century.
“We’ve fulfilled the job we came here to do,” European Union Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said after the talks wrapped up. “The message this sends to America is that there is full commitment from the global community, that climate change is such a big challenge, that it’s much more important than countries and their elections.”
Even delegations who previously frustrated progress at the UN talks went out of their way to urge Trump to cast aside his skepticism and embrace cleaner forms of energy. Trump said before the U.S. election the idea of climate change is a hoax invented by China and he’d scrap the Paris accord after taking office Jan. 20.
‘REALLY CONFIDENT’
“We’re really confident” Trump will help efforts to tackle climate change, Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, climate change and environment minister for the United Arab Emirates, said before the talks ended.
“Trump is coming from the private sector. He’s a businessman and he sees there are huge business opportunities” from this.
India and Brazil kept the talks running past midnight, disagreeing over how to move forward on a list of issues from Paris, such as negotiating a long-term climate finance goal and time frames for countries’ carbon-reduction targets. A compromise was eventually reached, with countries agreeing to return to those issues at talks in Bonn next year.
During the talks, Saudi Arabia ratified the Paris accord and 48 of the most vulnerable countries vowed to fuel their economies with 100-per-cent renewable energy by between 2030 and 2050. China’s envoy noted it was former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who started the climate talks long before officials in Beijing were engaged in the issue. Trump’s transition team has offered scant comment on the issue.
TEMPERATURES RISING
Even with the Paris agreement, temperatures are set to rise by as much as 3.4 Celsius by 2100 from pre-industrial levels, according to a United Nations report this month. That would mark the quickest shift in the climate since the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago, threatening to upend economies worldwide with more powerful storms and frequent droughts.