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France’s President Emmanuel Macron urged Germany to take on the mantle as a leading force reforming Europe at a “historic moment” for the bloc, hours before he was due to receive a key award Thursday for his efforts in boosting EU cohesion. With Berlin so far proving resistant to his flagship reform proposals for the European Union such as a common finance minister or budget, Macron stressed the importance for the bloc to speak with one voice. At a time when the United States is going its own way in ditching the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord,...

Dem Governor to Tom Steyer on climate change: 'The quieter the better' Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania summed up his climate plan as "the quieter the better" in a face-to-face meeting with billionaire activist Tom Steyer in 2017, according to emails from a source with knowledge of the meeting. The emails also show Wolf worried that jumping into a state-based climate "alliance" after Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord would "have a negative effect in his state." The emails were obtained in an open records request by E&E Legal, a nonprofit focused on energy and environmental legal issues, and...

In ITV interview US president also says he would take tougher stand on Brexit than Theresa May Donald Trump has said the United States could re-enter the Paris climate change agreement –and that he would have taken a “tougher stand” in Brexit negotiations than Theresa May. Sign up to the Media Briefing: news for the news-makers Read more The US president said his country could join the international accord if it had a “completely different deal” but called the existing agreement a “terrible deal” and a “disaster” for the US. In remarks on Brexit that will add to the pressure...

France failed to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, the government said Monday, just a month after President Emmanuel Macron warned that “we are losing the battle” against global warming. The environment ministry said the country emitted 463 tons of greenhouse gases, measured as carbon dioxide equivalents, or 3.6 percent more than its goal. It attributed the slip in part to lower oil prices, which can prompt people and businesses to consume more in areas such as transportation or heating. But emissions were down 15.3 percent from 1990 levels. […] … [T]he disappointing 2016 results show...

The European Union has agreed a host of climate and energy targets this week: It’s set energy efficiency standards for new buildings, and agreed to climate targets for 2030. Europe has a history of progressive environmental legislation, and it political leaders often position themselves as climate heroes. Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron appears to have moved in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s traditional territory as international climate champion, with public displays of support for climate science and attacks on US President Donald Trump’s regressive climate policies. But behind the bravado, is Europe doing enough to cut emissions? The short answer,...

French President Emmanuel Macron issued a stark warning on climate change at a summit in Paris on Tuesday, telling world leaders “we are losing the battle” against global warming. “We’re not moving fast enough, that’s the problem,” Macron told the One Planet Summit called to boost the 2015 Paris climate accord, which US President Donald Trump has renounced. “We must all act because we will all be held to account,” Macron told the gathering on an island in the River Seine, adding: “We cannot say we did not know.” Dozens of world leaders and hundreds of ministers, company bosses, and...

Much of France is getting its first taste of winter this week, with 50 departments placed on alert for snow and ice. Snow and ice is expected to hit much of France, with national weather agency Météo France placing 50 departments on yellow alert — the third highest warning level. The departments, including nine in Brittany, Normandy and the Pays de la Loire were placed on yellow alert — the third highest warning which advises people to be careful and stay up-to-date with the situation — at 6 am on Wednesday morning. Drivers are warned to be particularly vigilant. “Our...

Representatives for Norway’s government appeared in an Oslo court on Tuesday after environmental groups including Greenpeace brought a case over drilling in the Arctic. Greenpeace, along with environmentalist youth group Natur og Ungdom (Nature and Youth), has sued the Norwegian state over licenses it awarded in 2016 for oil prospecting in the Barents Sea. The Scandinavian country is western Europe’s biggest oil producer. A third group, called the Grandparents Climate Campaign, has also joined the case against the state. The plaintiffs accuse Norway of violating the Paris Agreement on climate change and a section of the country’s constitution amended in...

Denmark and other countries are determined to see through the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said as environment ministers from 190 countries met in the German city of Bonn on Tuesday at the UN’s COP23 climate summit. Much of the discussion at the summit will revolve around US President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this year that his country — which the world’s second-largest carbon dioxide emissions — would pull out of the December 2015 agreement. But other countries are determined to see the agreement through, regardless of the message sent by the United States, according...

Paul McCartney criticized President Trump's lax attitude toward climate change in a new interview with the BBC. "You've got someone like Trump who says that it [climate change] is just a hoax," he said. "A lot of people like myself think that's just madness." "It's maybe a good time now to try and focus people's attention and say, 'Look, forget about [Trump] – we can do something,'" he said. "It's not the total solution, but it's part of the solution. A lot of people have been saying this for a long time but there's resistance."

The United Nations has officially confirmed what many of us, including President Trump, knew already: the Paris climate accord was a complete waste of space. As UN Environment admits in its latest Emissions Shortfall report, even when you add up all the CO2 reduction pledges made by all the signatory nations at Paris, it still comes to only a third of what is supposedly necessary to stop the world warming by more than 2 degrees C by the end of this century. According to UN Environment’s head Eric Solheim, the world is heading for disaster: “One year after the Paris Agreement entered...

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has hit a new high, the UN said Monday, warning that drastic action is needed to achieve targets set by the Paris climate agreement. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800,000 years,” the World Meteorological Organization said. “Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event,” it said. The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the UN weather agency’s...

Following President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, a number of other nations have quietly begun ignoring the Paris energy goals, according to a new report out of Canada. According to Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental organization, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of the only signers of the Paris agreement who is actually abiding by the exacting demands of the accord. Meanwhile, Solomon notes in an essay in Friday’s Financial Post, “most signatories are ignoring, if not altogether abandoning Paris commitments, undoubtedly because voters in large part put no stock in scary...

Pope Francis marked UN World Food Day on Monday with a call for world governments to act together to fight the hunger, conflicts and climate change driving mass migration from the developing to the industrialized world. In a speech to the global body’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Francis said love rather than pity should be placed at the heart of international development efforts, and threw his weight behind efforts in the UN to negotiate a global accord on managed, safe migration. “Is it too much to ask to think of inserting the concept of love into the...

The state-based movement to continue meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change following President Trump’s choice to withdraw is making headway. The U.S. Climate Alliance, as the group is called, said Wednesday that it is on track to meet and possibly surpass its portion of the Paris Agreement’s targets of a 24% to 29% reduction in greenhouse gas emission rates from 2005 levels by 2025. The Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015 by 195 countries, aims to reduce emissions in order to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

The terms of the Paris Agreement are set in stone, the EU, China and Canada agreed at a summit in Montreal this weekend, while Washington was forced to deny that the US is planning to stay in the accord. Ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting in New York this week and the COP23 climate summit in Bonn in November, EU, Chinese and Canadian officials met in Montreal on Friday and Saturday (15-16 September) to present a united front against the United States on climate action. The US was represented at the meeting by an observer who, according to EU...

The White House denied multiple reports that the U.S. may stay in the Paris Climate Accord. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s administration signaled a shift to European officials from the decision in June to leave the agreement. “The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete told The Wall Street Journal.

President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn appears keen on working with the world about climate change, setting up a meeting next week at the United Nations to discuss the issue. The breakfast will include climate and energy ministers from around the world, according to a New York Times report. The Times cited an invitation describing the event as “an opportunity for key ministers with responsibility for these issues to engage in an informal exchange of views and discuss how we can move forward most productively.” Cohn was notably an advocate for the Trump administration staying in the Paris Climate...

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill on Thursday evening that includes $10 million to help fund the United Nations’ climate change body that oversees the Paris Climate Agreement, despite President Donald Trump’s decision to stop funding it. The amendment passed 16-14. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee voted in favor, as did all committee Democrats except for West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. The 30-member Senate panel, which allocates federal funds to various government agencies and organizations, approved a $51 billion spending bill for the State Department and foreign operations, which included an amendment...

Angela Merkel is essentially the de-facto global head of modern political liberalism.  The central tenet, almost religious-based in its importance, is the lunacy within “climate change”.  However, as most reasonable people have concluded, the ‘climate discussions’ are more about controlled global economics than any actual concerns about planetary climatology.   Bottom line, it’s the economics that really matter beyond all else.