Others argue that the widespread adoption of AI globally will help humanity adapt to climate change and even mitigate its causes.

So, will AI exacerbate climate change, or will it be our saviour?

Data Centres and AI

The growing demand for data centres containing thousands of energy-hungry computers is at the crux of this debate. Data centres need energy to run and to stay cool. Where do they get the power? If it comes from coal and natural-gas-fired power plants, then AI in data centres represents a significant carbon emission contributor. Even if the energy comes from renewables, data centres still contribute carbon emissions, just not in the same volume. That’s because generative AI, Large Language Models, AI training, and AI use by big companies and people like me who ask AI questions and receive answers require lots of computing power.

GPUs, TPUs and CPUs

AI developers, when calculating energy requirements, count the number of GPUs, TPUs and CPUs needed to do the job. What are these?

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in quantifying the current environmental carbon footprint for data centres, estimates a present-day contribution of about 0.5% to total carbon emissions from the energy they use today. It sees that number rising to 1.4% by 2030.

With more AI, does that mean faster climate change, or can more AI help mitigate global warming? Can we use its artificial brain power to design solutions to climate change while allowing us to energize it?

Some AI enthusiasts in Silicon Valley think that the technology is our answer to climate change. They see AI data centre operations producing insights that humans cannot discern. For example:

• AI can discern patterns in its own usage to forecast energy requirements from wind, solar and other renewable sources, and balance supply and demand.

• AI can look at the energy grid and help us improve grid transmission performance.

• AI can optimize data centres to reduce overall energy usage and address embodied emissions.

AI and Global Climate Change Externalities

Where AI can prove useful in mitigating or adapting to climate change is by focusing on important economic sectors such as agriculture, energy, healthcare, mining, transportation, manufacturing and service industries. AI can help to optimize food production, improve land use, address wildfire threats to global forests, identify new carbon sinks, improve weather forecasting and more.

AI as a technology accelerator can help us make how we produce the energy it and we need less negatively impactful on the environment. It can help us find new types of battery materials or invent new emission reduction technologies.

Widespread deployment of AI, through technological innovations, could reduce worldwide carbon emissions in 2035 by up to 1.4 gigatons states the IEA. The caveat for this prediction is that added data centres are powered only by renewable or net-zero energy sources.

Data centres generating AI could be a force for mitigating climate change. Yet currently, AI contributes to climate change through a proliferation of data centres and growing demand.

AI data centres can help save us from ourselves. As a technology accelerator that focuses on climate change challenges, AI operating from data centres can generate novel mitigation and adaptation solutions. Even though it may be obvious to AI, the one solution it cannot be programmed to consider is getting rid of us.

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Recent Bloomberg reports have highlighted real-world climate change impacts. For example, in 2022, a heatwave in Europe is credited with raising food prices by 0.7% and contributing 0.3% to overall inflation. A 2024 report cites damage from a heatwave to cocoa plantations, contributing to a 280% increase in prices that year.

Defining Climateflation

Are what Bloomberg is reporting climateflation? At a Frankfurt conference in 2022, Isabel Schnabel, on the board of the European Central Bank, introduced the term, climateflation, describing it as the inflationary pressure caused by the physical effects of climate change on food, energy, materials and services.

The following year, OMFIF, an independent think tank and advisory body of global central bankers, economists, and private and public sector investors, invited the financial community to a virtual roundtable dedicated to climateflation and its macroeconomic impacts. Today, among financial experts, bankers, and economists, climateflation and climate-induced supply shocks are widely being described.

For the reinsurance industry, the companies that underwrite primary insurers, climate-induced risks are seen as structural drivers of inflation. Climateflation is causing higher risk valuations and leading to primary insurers raising prices or withdrawing policy coverage. By 2030, global reinsurers estimate climate-induced losses will reach US$ 6.9 trillion annually, with $3.4 to $4.1 trillion representing the uninsured portions.

Climateflation, therefore, represents more than a shock to large institutions and governments. It is now a kitchen table issue.

Why Talk About Climate Change Around the Kitchen Table

For those of us who find so much of what is going on geopolitically in the world a distraction from the existential global warming crisis we face, talking about climate change at the kitchen table has been a non-starter of late. Except for the weather, unless you are a farmer, a fisher, a meteorologist or a climatologist, climate change is likely not first of mind in everyday conversation.

In my work for the past dozen years with the Liberal Party of Canada as a Policy Chair for local electoral districts, I have held numerous group discussions on climate change. Before COVID-19 and Donald Trump, global warming was “hot.”

Now, discussions focus on threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty from our southern neighbour. Yet, climate change waits for no one, and the impacts are happening around us and globally.

Since 2020, we have experienced climate-related damages to the Canadian economy from wildfires, floods, extreme heat, crop losses, fishery decline and more. The estimated annual GDP growth rate has declined by half.

Going About Kitchen-Table Climate Talks

You don’t think of climate change conversations as kitchen table fare. But with clmateflation, climate change is hitting our pocketbooks.

Consider what follows a roadmap to begin discussions.

• Talk about the weather. Ask about memories of past weather and how today compares. Need some words? Try these:

“Before we start eating, can we talk about what you notice about changes to the weather, and what stories you see or read in the news that bother you?”

• Talk about the cost of food and other consumables you purchase regularly. Are prices going up? Invite opinion on the causes? Need some words? Try these:

“Are you noticing how food prices are going up and that stuff is getting more expensive? Could climate change be impacting farming, affecting harvests and the price of food? Could the rise in price on other things we buy be affected by a changing climate?”

• Ask about the daily choices you make. Are they good for the environment? Do they contribute to pollution and climate change? Need some words? Try these:

“If we use less energy to heat and light the house, do you think we can contribute less to climate change? What else can we do together here at home?”

• Ask what one thing or habit each person at the table would be willing to correct to reduce climate change impacts? Need some words? Try these:

“If we waste less food, plant a vegetable garden, eat more vegetables and fruit and less red meat, do you think that would help with climate change?” 

• Ask the adults and children at the table about what they think where we live will look like in 20 years? What do you think will be better? What do you think will be worse? Need some words. Try these:

“What if we begin campaigns such as planting more trees in our neighbourhoods, putting in dry ponds to stop extreme rainfall flooding, making more bicycle-friendly roads, and converting public transit to electric? Can you think of any other local actions to help keep where we live and the planet from overheating?”

A Climateflation To-Do List

The answers to cutting climateflation exist. Consider this action to-do list:

• We can make our homes more energy efficient through energy and climate change retrofits: heat pumps to replace gas-powered furnaces, smart thermostats, LED lighting, and automatic shut-offs for appliances during periods of low usage.
• We can use government grants and no-interest or low-interest loans, and manufacturers’ rebates to reduce insurance risks and save money for retrofits.
• If your home roof is suitable, rooftop solar panels can reduce energy grid reliance and save money.
• If the local community has accessible and reliable public transit, you can make the switch from using the car.
• We can create emergency savings as a weather insurance fund rather than pay for increased premiums.
• We can grow some of the food we eat. In World War II, we called them victory gardens.
• We can lobby governments to pass climate change legislation, and we can vote for candidates who are serious about climate change.
• We can do business with companies equally committed to addressing climate change, an expression of solidarity in sustaining the environment.

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This is happening as the next El Niño is predicted to emerge by June. It is not the first time twin or triplet storms have formed, but they usually occur after an El Niño event.

What does it mean for the Pacific islands in the path of any one of these storms? Heavy rains, extreme heat, flooding, landslides, storm surges, and high winds, in other words, not good times ahead for these island nations.

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China’s Rush to Modernity

For several decades, the Chinese government has promoted rapid modernization. That demands electricity. To generate electricity, China turned to domestic and imported coal. Today, China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined.

According to the Visual Capitalist, in 2024, China produced and consumed 4.78 billion tons. A distant second was India at 1.08 billion tons, followed by Indonesia at 836 million, the United States at 465 million, Australia at 463 million, Russia at 427 million and South Africa at 235 million.

China’s Climate Change Pivot

In 2026, China will launch new plans to address climate change, reconciling the issue with its continuing economic ambitions as the leading manufacturer on Earth. Part of its manufacturing remit is clean technology, which the country continues to export to Developing World countries in the form of solar panels and wind turbines, to help them make the energy transition from carbon.

At this past international climate meeting in Belém, Brazil, China updated its 2035 NDCs (National Determined Contributions) as follows:

• For the first time, the country pledged to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10% from peak levels. Before this, China never announced reduction goals, but rather an easing in the country’s carbon intensity, a measure of GHG emissions per unit of GDP.
• It pledged to continue reforestation and afforestation efforts by 24 billion cubic metres beyond the country’s current 2030 target. Current efforts have increased the country’s forest coverage from 12% in the early 1980s to 24% in 2022, rehabilitating over 500,000 square kilometres (193,000 square miles), and stopping the desertification of its northern provinces in China’s “war on sand.”
• It announced a target of 3,600 GigaWatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity to be added by 2035 to the existing 1,100 GW of solar, and 573 GW of wind. The country has already surpassed the previously announced 2030 goal and is producing six times more wind and solar than existed in 2020.
• It pledged to raise non-fossil fuel energy as a percentage of its total energy capacity by 30%. Currently, renewables, including wind, solar, geothermal and hydro, account for 40% of the total.
• It plans to expand the national carbon emissions trading system (ETS), which currently covers the steel, cement, and aluminum sectors, to include all major industrial emitters by 2027, including chemical, petrochemical, civil aviation and pulp and paper sectors.

As promising as these climate change pledges are, and the country’s efforts to date, the Climate Action Tracker rates the country as “highly insufficient,” largely because of its immense reliance on coal for energy production. But China stands in good company. For example, Canada’s NDC rating was “highly insufficient,” the European Union’s was “insufficient,” and the United States was “critically insufficient.”

In March, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) reconvenes for its annual meeting. Largely a rubber stamp for the Communist Party’s central leadership, the next five-year plan will be approved. Will the plan enhance the commitments already pledged at COP30? Lili Pike of Bloomberg sees the key number to watch will be China’s target for carbon intensity. Pike notes that the country is “currently off track from its last five-year plan, created in 2020.” Will the plan the NPC rubber stamps include efforts to close the gap?

China, Developing World Countries And Climate Change

As for China’s support for Developing World ambitions to go greener, the country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been providing financial support for green energy projects in over 150 countries.

At COP30, its climate finance investments were not disclosed. The previous meeting at COP29, however, stated that since 2016, the nations of the Developing World had received loans and contributions from China in excess of 177 billion Chinese Yuan (CNY), greater than US$24.5 billion.

Chinese solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs) are visible across the globe, except for North America, where imposed Trump tariff barriers have restricted the flow. Akshat Rathi of Bloomberg notes that in countries like Bangladesh, off-grid home solar panels are speeding up rural electrification and have set records.

Elsewhere, solar panels and battery sales to Pakistan are causing that country to accelerate its transition from natural gas as a primary fuel. For Ethiopia, in its move to reduce gas and diesel pollution, the country has been importing Chinese electric vehicles at a record pace. China’s EV exports now span more than 200 countries, with most in the Global South. Total numbers for 2024-2025 reached 5.5 million. These countries see Chinese green imports as a way to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, improve urban air quality, and electrify transportation. Rathi predicts these Chinese green exports will keep rising in 2026.

The post Why is China And Not The West Leading In Mitigating Climate Change? appeared first on Techso Mogro.

Choosing Belém for the conference seemed apt considering the important role the Amazon basin and its massive tropical rainforest play in the world’s climate. Described by many climatologists as the lungs of the planet, the Amazon is threatened today by a growing Brazilian economy that is committed to development, which is threatening the river, the rainforest and the biodiversity of the region.

In Nature Communications this month, an article entitled Vulnerabilities and compound risks of escalating climate disasters in the Brazilian Amazon describes how climate-related disasters between 2000 and 2022 have disrupted the Amazon Basin and its human population. There has been a surge in extreme weather events, including a 124% increase in heavy and damaging rainfall leading to floods, a 300% increase in droughts and heatwaves, and a 409% increase in wildfire outbreaks. Total economic losses have risen 370% amounting to US$634.2 million annually. In smaller Amazonian towns and cities, the population has seen a 9.58% shrinking of the local economy, which is contributing to a widening gulf of socioeconomic disparity for the local population compared to the rest of Brazil.

Continued deforestation of the rainforest is seen as a major climate change impactor. Yet, the practice of forest clearing in Brazil to plant crops or manage herds of cattle continues even under the current, more environmentally-conscious federal government. As more of the Amazon forest gets cut down, the river basin is increasingly being turned into a savannah like the African Sahel. That means the climate is being changed with lengthening dry seasons plus more extreme heat events. So, COP30 in Belém should have demonstrated a sense of urgency, at least to help Brazil and other equatorial countries like those in Asia and Africa, seeing similar climate change impacts.

That, however, was not the case. The conference president, André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s Secretary of Climate, Energy and Environment, and a climate change activist, asked COP30 participants to create roadmaps for phasing out fossil fuels and halting and reversing deforestation. What he got, however, was a non-binding, unofficial agreement on these important issues.

The real surprise was that a conference held in the Amazon Basin couldn’t agree on the latter goal to end deforestation, while viewing the environmental destruction happening in plain sight.

So, what did COP30 yield? It is called the Belém Package, a comprehensive consensus-based program that includes:

• An extended timeline to 2035 with $1.3 trillion to be spent annually for climate action, including a tripling of adaptation finance to help vulnerable countries cope with climate impacts, originally agreed upon at COP28.
• The Global Implementation Accelerator, a voluntary and collaborative initiative to support countries in accelerating NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) to lower atmospheric emissions, and to create capacity building through technical and financial resource sharing.
• An annual pledge of $66 billion to be spent on accelerating renewable energy growth, and $82 billion annually to address transmission needs and energy storage infrastructure from the power and utility providers that form UNEZA (Utilities for Net Zero Alliance).
• A US$5.5 billion tropical forests forever fund involving 53 participating countries that pledged at least 20% of this money to be spent on the Indigenous populations located in affected areas.
• The Belém Health Action Plan, involving 30 countries and 50 organizations and $300 million from the Climate and Health Funders Coalition to strengthen climate-related health plans for hospitals, surveillance and disease prevention, especially in the Global South.
• Support from 10 countries for the RAIZ Accelerator, an initiative to restore degraded farmland based on a Brazilian program that has raised $6 billion in restoration projects covering 3 million hectares.
• The Gates Foundation pledged $1.4 billion to support smallholder farmers impacted by climate change.

What didn’t happen at COP30?

• Despite 80 nations calling for a timetable to phase out fossil fuels, major fossil fuel-producing countries were able to block consensus.
• No roadmap to end deforestation was created despite the location in Belém, next to the Amazon rainforest.
• The watering down of NDCs regarding emission reduction targets is ensuring that the 1.5°C (2.7°F) Paris Climate Agreement goal established by over 190 nations will likely no longer be attainable.

The lack of leadership from the U.S., with Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, meant the second-largest carbon emitter was not at the table. It meant U.S. muscle to affect global climate policy was no longer in play. It meant fossil fuel producers, backed by the Trump administration’s pro-coal, oil and gas messaging, could resist the efforts of the COP to implement the goals established at COP28 of a global fossil fuel phaseout.

So, at best, COP30 was a conference that fell far short of what is currently needed to mitigate global warming, and it means another lost year for the global community to take meaningful climate change action.

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The implications of the ICJ advisory opinion include:

• Enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from nations with implications for the upcoming COP30 conference.
• That nations must enact more stringent emissions reduction legislation.
• Increased climate litigation between nations and against governments and private actors.
• Opportunities for new investment treaties embracing climate change and new transnational climate agreements.

A member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Delta Merner, described to The Washington Post the fallout from the ICJ advisory opinion, characterizing it as a moment in time that will ultimately hold polluters accountable and “reshape the political, legal and even the moral landscape.” She continued, “We’ve been stuck in this notion that climate action is all voluntary. The ICJ reframed the climate crisis as a legal and human rights emergency.”

The ICJ relied on IPCC reports describing them as “the best available science on the causes, nature and consequences of climate change.”

The ICJ opinion does not legally bind nations to mitigate and adapt to climate change following the recommendations of the IPCC, but the report should influence the deliberations at COP30 to take place this November in Belém, Brazil. Nations that were signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement are expected to deliver their NDCs aimed at keeping global warming aligned with no more than a 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) rise in mean average temperatures.

I suspect that nations from the Global South will willingly provide NDCs. It is the richer nations of the Global North, led by the United States, that are more likely to be less cooperative.

One of the other goals of COP30 is the legally binding obligations of richer nations to provide financial assistance to poorer ones to help the latter implement climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The COP30 President-designate is André Aranha Corrêa do Lago of Brazil. In a letter to the member states joining Brazil at COP30, he called for transformative actions on the ground to achieve the submitted NDCs, a breakthrough on loss and damage funding by richer nations, and for the first Global Stocktake to halt and reverse deforestation, forest and ocean degradation, and for renewed efforts to transition away from fossil fuels while pursuing sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.

Currently, the loss and damage fund in response to climate change is in its startup, with the current amount at US$250 million. The estimate of needed funds is $250 to 400 billion per year by 2030. At COP29, the overall climate finance goal for 2035 was set at $300 billion annually. None of these targets is binding at present. The opinion of the ICJ may shift the goalposts for this important COP30 agenda item.

The ICJ opinion noted the importance of forthcoming decisions at COP30. The judges provided twelve opinions and declarations, which were agreed to by them unanimously. These include:

1. Nations have a legal obligation under international law to protect the environment and climate under existing treaties and international law.

2. Nations are obliged to act to prevent, reduce, and control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that know no borders and inflict harm on others.

3. Nations are obliged to cooperate internationally to effectively address climate change and its impacts.
4. The obligation to address climate change is owed not just to other nations but to present and future generations.
5. Climate action is tied to human rights law obligations to provide a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
6. The 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming lower limit set as the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement and subsequently referenced in subsequent COP meetings is not just an aspirational goal.
7. Nations are obligated to take steps to prevent significant harm to the climate system and the environment, especially for vulnerable countries and communities.
8. With climate change disproportionately impacting small island developing states and the least developed countries, and other vulnerable populations, richer nations are obligated to assist.
9. Nations that do not fulfil these obligations under international law must provide restitution and compensation.

10. The IPCC reports and the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change are the legal basis for the findings and obligations as described herein.

11. No economic, political, or developmental argument absolves nations from their legal climate obligations.

12. Climate protection duties are not just bilateral but are owed to the international community as a whole, underscoring a global and collective responsibility.

We shall see if the ICJ ruling has the necessary and heightened impact at COP30, getting all of the participants to make good faith efforts to address the existential threat to all of us from anthropogenic climate change. Only collective action will change the trajectory of global warming before it reaches the dreaded tipping points leading to an accelerated and runaway greenhouse effect.

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It is not just Trump that is leading the charge away from actively tackling the human causes of climate change. Other governments or soon-to-be-elected ones are pointing to regressive policies that will only exacerbate the warming trend for both the atmosphere and oceans. For example:

• In Canada, the Liberal government that introduced carbon pricing is in freefall at the polls with the government-in-waiting calling for a “carbon tax election.”
• The recent COP, number 29 in the series, held in Azerbaijan, a country dependent on revenues from its fossil fuel operations, showed just how reluctant the wealthy countries of the world were committed to act on climate change and assist poor countries to weather current and future damage caused by extreme weather events, sea level rise and atmospheric warming.
• In Europe, the EU’s leading countries, Germany and France, are facing political crises that likely will lead to future anti-climate action parties forming their governments.
• The fossil fuel industry continues to perpetuate its greenwashing with messages of commitments to achieving net zero emissions by mid-century while their actions say otherwise. The fossil fuel industry appears to be hellbent on exploring for more oil and gas and pumping as much of it out of the ground from now to when we all start choking on the fumes.

Under Joe Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other policies and legislation, although not putting a price on carbon, have provided significant incentives to begin to move the country’s carbon emissions in the right direction.

Trump, however, will likely gut or reverse many IRA initiatives and policies. His cabinet picks for the environment and energy are climate change deniers and closely aligned with the fossil fuel lobby. What may save the U.S. from itself is action by state, city and municipal governments still committed to mitigating and adapting to climate change.

What say the people?

A recent global survey by the UN Development Program and the University of Oxford involved more than 73,000 from 77 countries who responded in 87 different languages. Those surveyed were asked 15 questions. Their answers show that the global public is far more committed to addressing climate change than its governments.

Here is a sampling of the results:

• 86% of respondents stated that countries needed to work together on climate change even if they disagreed on other big issues like security and trade.
• 81% wanted their governments to restore nature by planting trees and protecting wildlife from human activity.
• 80% wanted their country to strengthen its commitment to address climate change.
• 80% wanted schools to teach about climate change to prepare the next generation for the future.
• 79% believed richer countries needed to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.
• 78% want more protection for people at risk from extreme weather.
• 76% stated they were extremely, very or somewhat worried about climate change’s effects on the next generation.
• 71% wanted their country to very or somewhat quickly replace the use of coal, oil and gas for energy with renewables.
• 70% indicated that climate change was affecting big decisions about family, work, where to live, and what to buy a little to a lot.
• 53% stated they were more worried this year about climate change than in the previous year.
• 43% said extreme weather events were getting worse.
• 32% stated they thought about climate change daily.

Achim Steiner, the Administrator of the UN Development Program, in assessing the poll results stated:

“The Peoples’ Climate Vote is loud and clear. Global citizens want their leaders to transcend their differences, to act now and to act boldly to fight the climate crisis…This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on.”

Let’s hope governments take note.

The post When Dealing With Climate Change Winning Slowly is the Same as Losing appeared first on Techso Mogro.

The last time Trump bailed on the United Nations and its supervised global climate change efforts, he left a vacuum that China and the European Union had to fill. Now, the future of the COP annual meetings, where global climate change negotiations take place, is likely to take a back seat to any actions the U.S. takes or doesn’t regarding the climate file.

Trump has indicated he is no fan of the American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which has pushed the U.S. on a path to mitigate climate change through programs that accelerate electrification of the economy. The Act uses tax credits, deductions and rebates to cover carbon emissions capture. It provides vehicle credits for purchasing EVs. It includes incentives to develop clean fuel alternatives to gas and diesel, money for home energy audits, retrofit funds for windows, doors and improvements to building envelopes for energy conservation. It subsidizes upgrades to heat pumps and the purchase of solar panels and biomass stoves.  It offers utilities money for grid modernization, and expansion of renewable energy capacity including solar, on and offshore wind, and battery storage. There are incentives for domestic sourcing and production of the critical minerals needed to support battery and renewable energy development. Funds are available for special climate programs where Americans have been affected by extreme weather events including federal assistance for climate resilience for indigenous people.

Will he try to roll back these federal programs considering that the money already invested has benefitted many states that voted for him? The IRA’s job impact is already noticeable having created several hundred thousand new jobs in 44 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The projections show the Act will yield more than a million new jobs yearly in the years to follow. For Trump to kill the Act would be political suicide so I highly doubt he will do much more than play around the edges to shore up his climate change-denying credentials.

This week Trump announced his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is former congressman, Lee Zeldin, whose voting record in support of environmental issues has been weak. He is likely to have a mandate to roll back EPA policies that restrict fossil fuel expansion and use and may undo initiatives around carbon emissions capture and sequestration.

Trump likely will pull the U.S. out a second time from the Paris Climate Agreement which will put other countries on the hook to make up the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction differences that will be absent with the world’s second-largest polluter walking away. Trump may even go further and withdraw from the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conventions agreed to by then-President George H. W. Bush and unanimously approved by the American Senate. That convention established the basis for the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the annual global COP meetings that are organized to tackle climate change.

The commitments to slash emissions by 50% in 2030 from 2005 levels made by President Biden will be ignored. The remaining American climate change program commitments will have to come from state and local governments. Fortunately, at the non-federal level, the U.S. has good coverage with 48 states and the District of Columbia having developed comprehensive climate change action plans. Hundreds of cities and towns also have climate action policies. An organization called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) throughout the U.S. provides support for local initiatives by providing technical assistance and tools.

In a PBS News segment, its headline reads: “Experts worry Trump’s second term will cripple efforts to stop climate change.” The article expresses concerns about an “emboldened Trump” and what it will mean to the limiting of warming of the planet. Trump’s return to the White House is happening just as mean atmospheric temperatures are approaching 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) the desired lower threshold target that Paris Climate Agreement attendees aspired to achieve. In the absence of U.S. climate leadership, however, unless the rest of the world steps up we are trending in the wrong direction.

At COP29 this week it was expected to achieve agreement on a global climate aid fund that is expected to grow to $1 trillion annually. Absent the U.S. contribution after Trump pulls out, the fund will likely not come close to the objective. At the same time as an international partner, the U.S. will lose with some stating that everyone knows the country doesn’t follow through on any agreements it signs. What an indictment.

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At a recent meeting of Citizens’ Climate International’s Earth Diplomacy Leadership Initiative workshop, attendees described the current state of our ability to bend the carbon curve to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gasses on global climate. Despite the annual COP meetings to create consensus and a world response to a growing climate crisis, the overwhelming conclusions from experts were not encouraging.

With the onset of the next El Niño already in play in the Pacific Ocean this year, over the next two years, the world will see a mean increase since the onset of the Industrial Revolution of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) in global atmospheric temperature.

A decade ago that number seemed far away. At the Paris COP 21 meeting in 2015, 196 countries agreed to put in place programs and policies to keep warming to no more than 1.5, and in the worst-case scenario, 2.0 Celsius (3.8 Fahrenheit). It was thought then that there was wiggle room of 15 to 20 years before 1.5 would be reached. The different scenarios at the time between 1.5 and 2.0 were well described by climate scientists and the picture of the latter was seen as significantly more threatening than the former.

In the recently completed workshop, the attendees heard that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified macroprudential risks related to climate disruption. What does the term macroprudential mean? It refers to one or more measures designed to give a financial system greater resilience in the face of economic shocks including those resulting from climate change. The IMF recognized that national budgets and economies would be at greater risk and in need of IMF assistance and programs if temperatures rose 2.0 Celsius and stated a need to build an understanding of what the real risks, harm and costs would look like in a future under such a scenario.

Other insights, recommendations and conclusions from this workshop included:

• A recognition that national and global plans to mitigate climate change have been inadequate. We now know that the 1.5 Celsius rise in atmospheric temperature is baked in and that an overshoot of that rise will entail the need to rethink existing programs and policies necessitating significant readjustments.
• Many countries, mostly in the Global South, are already feeling climate disruption leading to destruction and rising debt. For many living in these nations, climate change is causing significant cost increases. Programs for debt relief, therefore, are needed not just for entire countries facing the climate threat, but also for the people of those countries.
• Finance ministries and central banks have to get their acts together through policies and programs to reduce the harm and cost of climate change and support real-world climate resiliency.
• The financial and banking industry needs to develop clear risk guidelines for climate change, natural disasters, and technological transitions. Banks need to end their support of industries and companies that contribute to the ongoing climate threat. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Financial Stability Oversight Council have recognized the structural threat to the financial sector from a changing climate. It is hoped that the sector itself is equally cognizant of the risks.
• Industry and businesses need to develop open and transparent credible, active and verifiable net-zero emission goals and programs.
• Governments should adopt integrated and holistic climate policy planning to create domestic efficiencies and more productive international cooperation with faster timelines for implementation.
• Nature restoration, conservation, and effective investments in adaptation and resilience are needed to optimize national and international climate change strategies. Governments should be adopting integrated and holistic approaches to national economic development and value creation based on an understanding of climate impacts.
• Small states, and low and middle-income countries, have to engage large economies to agree to a higher ambition and faster timelines than they could conceive on their own for implementing climate resilience policies.
• The upcoming SB58, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is taking place in June. COP28 is scheduled for December. At both of these global meetings, there needs implementation of a strategy for worldwide climate-safe human development addressing food security, international trade, and national economic development, in line with maximum global heating of 1.5 Celsius degrees with as little as possible climate-related harm and cost, including for those populations and countries most vulnerable.

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