Tag: Paris Agreement

The “yellow vest” riots in Paris should alarm Democrats, especially the new progressive governors in blue states like California. Fuel would be more expensive, people would drive less or more thoughtfully, and the problem would be solved, tout de suite! So now enters the next governor of California, champion of sanctuary cities and San Francisco’s drug-addicted sidewalk defecators, and a promiser of higher taxes, father of the California’s budget-busting single-payer health care proposal, building his own wall against climate change. California has highest marginal income tax rate of the states, 13.3 percent. And apparently not the top 1 percent who make 24 percent of the income and pay 48 percent of the taxes. But what about the other 59 percent, the middle-income earners who pay 50 percent of the taxes, high property and sales taxes, and are increasingly unable to buy a home or even afford rent? This was apparently because Newsom as governor promised to raise taxes even further. Veiled in a tax conversation during the gubernatorial campaign were promises of higher spending, a single-payer health plan and feigned indifference to repealing property tax limits. Gov.-elect Newsom clearly might think he has a mandate to continue a high spending progressive agenda, but when might the yellow vests come out? Just about the time Newsom is getting comfortable in the governor’s chair, people will be reminded that they cannot deduct those huge California income or property taxes on the federal tax forms.

After two weeks of discordant and emotional negotiations, delegates from nearly 200 nations agreed on a set of rules meant to help curb global warming. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reports. #CNN #News

Global warming is a crisis for civilisation and a crisis for life on Earth. Human-caused climate change was behind 15 deadly weather disasters in 2017, including droughts, floods and heatwaves. The world’s leading climate scientists, in a special report for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have warned that there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C. To meet that target, global carbon emissions need to drop by 45% by 2030. We need radical, urgent change. This is largely because rising rightwing nationalism has vitiated the global solidarity needed to avoid a catastrophe. Yet none of this is possible when the most important actors on the world stage think that the chief business of the nation state lies at home. The biggest problem is the US president, Donald Trump – a longtime climate-change denier. Tens of thousands of people in Brussels marched ahead of the summit in Poland. Even the US has been allowed to play a constructive role in creating rules by which nations agree to abide by in meeting climate targets – because everyone has an interest in creating a backdoor for Washington to re-enter the agreement.

Donald Trump should not meddle in French affairs, its foreign minister said on Sunday, after the US president criticised France in tweets following riots in Paris. "The Paris Agreement isn't working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France," Trump wrote on his Twitter account. Protests and riots all over France. Le Drian said images published in the United States with people chanting "We want Trump" were filmed during a Trump visit to London several months ago. Clad in their luminous safety jackets, the "yellow vests" show no sign of calling off weeks of protests over rising living costs and accusations that Macron only looks out for the rich. Maybe it's time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The US was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!" Le Drian also said most Americans disagreed with Trump over his decision to walk away from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Alain Juppe, mayor of Bordeaux where a protester lost his hand after picking up an anti-riot grenade, joined calls from across the political spectrum for Macron to respond.

Better late than never. For more than three years I have called on major U.S. oil companies to join their European, Asian and Latin American brethren in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. They are merely dedicated to finding ways to keep producing fossil fuels while also slowing global warming. On HoustonChronicle.com: Don't believe in climate change? I own an electric car and my spouse develops utility-scale renewable energy projects. But I also acknowledge that we will need oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative operates a $1 billion investment fund, called Climate Investments, to commercialize experimental technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These include capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide, improving internal combustion engines and reducing methane emissions. Lastly, in a reflection of these companies’ shift to natural gas, the initiative is working on a Clean Gas Project in the United Kingdom to “design a full-scale gas power plant with carbon capture and storage, including industrial CO2 sequestration capability,” according to an online presentation. Neither do these companies take political actions to back their public support for a carbon tax.

The head of the United Nations body charged with addressing global warming wants to work with the Trump administration to bring the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement on climate change, she told TIME last week at an energy conference in Houston. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that she remains “hopeful” that Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement can be reversed before it becomes official in 2020. “We are more than happy to engage with the U.S. administration in order to address their concerns,” Espinosa told TIME on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference hosted by IHS Markit. George David Banks, a former Trump energy advisor, told TIME last month that Trump has been telling foreign leaders that the U.S. might rejoin the Paris Agreement. Banks suggested the Trump might want to use re-engaging on the Paris Agreement as a talking point ahead of the 2020 election. Trump’s position on climate change is far from the only issue on Espinosa’s plate. The former Mexican foreign minister acknowledged to TIME that countries’ current commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions remain behind the target set in the Paris Agreement but said that the “path is there” to achieve the goals. The deal calls for countries to limit temperatures from rising more than 2°C (3.6°F) by 2100 with an ideal target of keeping temperature rise below 1.5°C (2.7°F). “We are far from the 1.5 degrees if we look at the commitments that have been put on the table,” she said. “Without participation of the energy sector in the transformation that we need to have to address climate change we will not be able to get to the goals set in the Paris Agreement,” she said.