New UN climate chief: 'Action on warming unstoppable'

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39081783

New UN climate chief: 'Action on warming unstoppable'

By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

8 hours ago

From the section Science & Environment

The UN’s new climate chief says she’s worried about President Donald Trump – but confident that action to curb climate change is unstoppable. President Trump said he’d withdraw from the UN climate deal and stop funding the UN’s clean energy programme. But former Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa told BBC News that the delay in any firm announcement suggests the issue is still unresolved. She travels to US this weekend to try and meet the new US secretary of state.

Ms Espinosa said it would be more damaging for the US to leave the on-going climate talks process altogether than to stop funding the clean energy programme. The US pays approximately $4m towards this programme every year - and often an extra $2m in voluntary funding. But she said the rest of the world would carry on tackling climate change without the US, if necessary.

She said China’s stated willingness to lead the world in curbing emissions might cause American diplomats to ponder the implications of allowing China a role of global moral leadership. “We are of course worried about rumours that the possibility of the US pulling out of the Paris agreement and the convention on climate change,” she said. “It would be very bad if there were a change of position in the US. That’s why I’m looking forwards to engaging with the US as a partner.”

She did not explain how the US would be able to remain within the Paris framework whilst scrapping action on its own emissions strategy that helps underpin that process. But she drew hope from the vast number of firms and cities looking towards a low-carbon future – in the US and round the world: "A lot of US businesses are really going into the agenda of sustainability and some are making their own commitments in emissions reductions in their own operations."

(snip)

[progree]

1. "The US pays approximately $4m towards this programme every year"

Sheesh, like wow, huge (sarcasm), imagine a stack of 400 million pennies ... it would be about 379 miles tall, and weighs 1100 tons ... what if that stack fell over?

But extremely minor compared to a 2017 U.S. budget of $4.15 Trillion (that's 4.15 million million, so that $4 million spent on the programme is about 1 millionth of the U.S. budget)

[hatrack]

2. Yes, unstoppable - just like the warming itself . .