Trump can kill UN climate deal, warns EU carbon market chief

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States is a “real and imminent threat” to the fight against climate change, and “completely upends every single element” of the Paris Agreement, making it almost impossible to deliver, the MEP leading EU carbon market reform has warned. Trump, elected today (9 November), has called climate change a hoax, saying it was “fictional”, and “created by the Chinese”. The president-elect has threatened to pull the US out of the UN deal to cap global warming at no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels with an aspirational 1.5 degree target. Today, EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete wrote to Trump, stressing the need for continued EU-US cooperation. Ian Duncan is the Conservative member of the European Parliament leading the reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world’s largest scheme for trading emissions allowances. Reforming the ETS is a major part of the EU strategy to cut emissions in line with the bloc’s climate commitments. World governments are this week meeting in Marrakech, Morocco for the COP22 climate conference, which aims to thrash out the practical implication of the landmark pact to cap global warming. “It completely upends every single element of the Paris Accord and almost certainly makes it impossible to deliver,” Duncan said. Who will listen to US Secretary of State John Kerry in Marrakech now?, he asked. US officials in Morocco are “speaking for nobody but themselves and for an outgoing administration.”...more