Environmentalist weighs in on Trump’s plan for energy, climate action

Announced with much fanfare 11 months ago, the Paris Climate Treaty finally came into force earlier this month – just in time for the election of Donald Trump to potentially render the whole thing moot.

But there’s a bigger problem for climate campaigners than Trump. It’s that the Paris Treaty will in any case have very little effect on temperature change.

It promises to keep temperature rises below 2C. But there is no way any of the Paris promises will get anywhere close to achieving this.

In November, the 26th United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) will set a new global agenda for tackling climate change. The presence of the world's most powerful leaders at COP26 and the elevation of climate change to the top of President Biden's agenda in the United States demonstrate just how seriously many governments and their citizens now take climate change. But what assumptions guide decision-making on climate goals and will new policies produce the right outcomes? Bjorn Lomborg offers a critical perspective on the climate agenda.

Twenty nations including Japan, Italy and Australia may be releasing more greenhouse-gas pollution than they agreed to under the Kyoto treaty to curb global warming. They're failing to rein in carbon-dioxide output enough to meet their pledges signed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, according to reports by individual countries. As a penalty for missing their goals under the treaty, the nations are required to buy permits for every excess ton of the heat-trapping gas released through 2012.