Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will write a $4.5 million check to help cover the United States’ commitment to the Paris climate agreement. His offer fills the significant funding gap created by President Donald Trump‘s plan to withdraw from the global climate accord, which made the U.S. the only country opposed to the […]
Community and grassroots leaders from the U.S. on Tuesday announced their platform at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23). The “U.S. People’s Delegation” is attending to counter the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda and to hold U.S. states, cities, businesses and the public accountable to climate action commitments. The platform includes youth, Indigenous peoples, […]
By Alison Kirsch At the start of next week, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N.’s negotiating body on climate change, will meet in Germany to discuss next steps after the historic agreement by 195 countries to curb global climate change to 1.5° Celsius, or 2° at most—an agreement whose only logical […]
The United Nations (UN) Environment program has released its eighth annual Emissions Gap Report, which ominously found that greenhouse gas emissions are set to overshoot the Paris climate deal by about 30 percent. The goal of the Paris agreement is to keep global temperature rise this century to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial […]
By Paula Caballero, David Waskow and Christina Chan Two years after the world joined together to forge the Paris agreement on climate change, representatives from around the globe will convene in Bonn, Germany, on Nov. 6 for the next round of United Nations talks. The summit marks a critical stepping stone for global climate action. […]
By Andy Rowell When Donald Trump signalled earlier this year that the U.S. was going to pull out of the UN Paris climate agreement, there was global outrage at his actions. The perceived wisdom is that the agreement is the best international mechanism we have to fight climate change and to keep global warming to […]
By Leah Samberg Around the globe, about 815 million people—11 percent of the world’s population—went hungry in 2016, according to the latest data from the United Nations. This was the first increase in more than 15 years. Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion […]
By Paul Brown The hurricanes and wildfires that have severely damaged large areas of the U.S. in recent weeks have had no impact on President Donald Trump‘s determination to ignore the perils of climate change and support the coal industry. In a deliberate denial of mainstream science, the Trump administration has issued a strategic four-year […]
Erik Solheim, the head of the United Nations’ Environment Program, made an interesting point during a recent speech in New York: Companies, not taxpayers, should pay the costs of damaging the planet. “The profit of destroying nature or polluting the planet is nearly always privatized, while the costs of polluting the planet or the cost […]