Climate Deal: US and China Join Paris Climate Accords (bbc.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the BBC: The US and China -- together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions -- have both formally joined the Paris global climate agreement... It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions. Before China made its announcement, the 23 nations that had so far ratified the agreement accounted for just over 1% of emissions. This will put pressure on G20 nations over the weekend to move faster with their pledge to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels...
There's a G20 summit starting on Sunday, and the BBC's environmental analyst reports that the accord "will just need the EU and a couple of other major polluters to cross the threshold." Its ultimate goal is to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius -- "well above the aspirational 1.5C heating that the UN accepts should really be the limit" -- though U.K. researchers report that already 2016 temperatures may be rising 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.

Comments

Hooray!

[PvtVoid]

Now please quit arguing that since China isn't doing anything, there's no point in the U.S. doing anything either. Fact is, the U.S. and China together are responsible for more than 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the EU, Russia, India, Japan and Brazil combined. We have a unique responsibility in the fight against global warming.

Re:Hooray!

[Stephan Schulz]

Icelandic vulcanos produce more but thei don't count that. They can't do much about that either.

Well, good thing then that that claim is plainly wrong, by many orders of magnitude. Overall, volcanic activity produces less than 1% of human CO2 emissions. And Iceland is only a small part of the overall picture. This is based on a a well-debunked claim - currently no. 74 of pseudo-sceptical arguments.

Re:Trump will reverse it

[Kjella]

The US 'formally' joining the Paris Accord is based on Obama's claim that it's not actually a treaty, and therefore doesn't actually require Congressional ratification, despite the fact that that it incorporates compulsory actions on the part of the signatory countries, and is therefore a treaty.

Well it doesn't have any penalties. JFK could say "we will send a man to the moon by the end of the decade" without any legal problems of binding Congress and future presidents because it's no more than a statement of intent. The Paris accords are pretty much the same, we promise to work to reduce climate change. If we don't... we don't. Nothing has been explicitly regulated or banned, no money has been explicitly promised, it's basically a statement of good intentions put to paper. It's a symbolic agreement with less teeth than the Kyoto protocol exactly so it can pass anywhere, like the UN declaration of human rights even though they're regularly violated in many countries of the world.