Star power backs S.F. climate talks

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.”