“America’s Pledge” Report Affirms US Commitment to Paris Accord on Climate Change

“America’s Pledge” Report Affirms US Commitment to Paris Accord on Climate Change

Last week saw the boldest example yet of business taking the lead to fight climate change since the Trump administration’s announced intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement earlier this year.

Last week, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California governor Jerry Brown released the America’s Pledge report. The report outlines the scope and scale of non-federal climate action, and it’s big, really big: businesses, cities, and states representing more than half the US economy and population have declared their support for the Paris Agreement by signing the “We Are Still In” declaration. That’s a total of 20 US states, 110 US cities, and over 1,700 businesses with US operations representing $25 trillion in market capitalization. If these non-federal actors were a country, their economy would be the third largest in the world, bigger than all but China and the US. Here’s hoping that this giant economic clout can produce an equally large reduction in GHG emissions.

I’m John Howell for 3BL Media.