WaPo: Trump's Paris speech needs a serious fact check
Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris accord did not legally bind nations to emissions targets. The only thing keeping a nation in check was pressure from its international peers. Under the agreement, the United States could miss an emissions goal and face no penalty. It could reset that goal, too, with no formal consequence. It's unclear what other concessions the United States could gain from a renegotiation.
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China cannot "do whatever they want" until then, as Trump said, at least if China wants to meet that voluntary 2030 target. It needs to begin acting now to control emissions — and in fact, is signaling to the world it is already doing so by announcing in January the cancellation of plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants.
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The Paris deal "is more fair to the U.S. than previous agreements because it includes all the major economies of the world, not just the rich countries, so both developed countries and developing countries have skin in the game," Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the school's Environmental Law and Policy Program, said. Trump's "portrayal is at odds with reality," she added. While it's true that current commitments are not enough to meet the two-degree goal, Trump's figures are off. As my Post colleague Chris Mooney writes, reporting on an analysis from an MIT researcher: "The current country level pledges under the Paris agreement would reduce the planet’s warming by the year 2100 down from 4.2 degrees Celsius (7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit), or nearly a full degree Celsius.
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The Green Climate Fund contains $10.3 billion not $100 billion. And the U.S. share comes from the Treasury, not any pool or money set aside for anti-terrorism purposes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/06/02/the-energy-202-trump-s-paris-speech-needs-a-serious-fact-check/59302a21e9b69b2fb981dc14/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_energy202-920a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.0d1d40027f4d
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