News

Ministers of the 50 Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) member countries launched a 5-year action plan today to cut short-lived climate pollutants, an effort that can avoid 0.6°C warming globally by 2050. Fast action to reduce short-lived climate pollutants “is an urgent, effective and pragmatic complement to aggressive mitigation of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases,” read the Paris Communique released at the Paris, COP21 meeting today.

The Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change (GMACCC) underscored the need for fast action on climate change, emphasizing the relation to global security and calling for militaries to act as key contributors to climate change preparedness at the the Paris climate conference today.

President Obama reminded the world of the success of the Montreal Protocol, an international climate agreement that continues to provide bold mitigation, at the Leaders Event opening of COP21. “Earlier this month in Dubai, after years of delay, the world agreed to work together to cut the super-pollutants known as HFCs. That’s progress.”

Here is a remarkable fact about global warming: It might be twice as bad right now were it not for a treaty negotiated by a conservative American president, for an entirely different purpose, based on motives no one has ever quite understood.