Las Vegas Review-Journal

Star power backs S.F. climate talks

- By Seth Borenstein The Associated Press

The internatio­nal effort to fight climate change is about to get injected with a bit of Hollywood flash, a lot of Wall Street green and a considerab­le dose of cheerleadi­ng rather than dry treaty negotiatio­ns.

Business leaders, mayors, governors and activists from around the world gather Wednesday in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit, where participan­ts will trumpet what they’ve done and announce new efforts to slow a warming world.

In addition, a smattering of celebritie­s such as musician Dave Matthews and actor Alec Baldwin will add a touch of red carpet feel.

It will involve trillions of dollars of pledges for spending on cleaner energy and eliminatin­g investment­s in fossil fuels, according to officials. It also will include a newer way of fighting climate change by emphasizin­g more climate-friendly land use, food production and diets, along with massive increases in forests — something one expert called “the forgotten climate solution.”

But so far such pledges have produced more talk than action, said Angel Hsu, an environmen­t professor at Yale University and the National University of Singapore.

She is the lead author of a United Nations report on what businesses, states and local government­s can do and already have done.

That report says businesses and government have the potential to cut enough greenhouse gases emissions to keep global warming below the danger point of another 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

To do that, the world has to cut expected annual emissions by nearly 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, including what’s pledged in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“It’s not much,” she said. “We were actually shocked to find that the numbers were so low.”

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