03 June, 2017

Only A Fossil Would Fuel The World With Coal

President Donald Trump has announced the US will be seeking to renegotiate the Paris climate accord. It sounds like big news. The kind of news that can be depressing for the wonderful people working to secure climate action. But it isn't all doom and gloom. A set of powerful realities mean that our destination has been set, we're just not sure how we're going to get there yet.
Simon Sheikh, his wife Anna Rose, who was brought
to Shepparton in 2013 to talk about climate change
at and event organised by Slap Tomorrow, and
their son, Robbie.
The first reality is that the US has confirmed it will adhere to the legal terms embedded in the Paris accord. This means that the US will not actually leave the Paris accord until November 2020 (which happens to be the same month as the next US election). And even when (or perhaps we should say 'if') the US leaves, the legal mechanism will survive, with more than 140 countries having ratified the Paris accord.

More importantly, China and the European Union have confirmed that their intentions are to uphold their Paris commitments. Both have booming renewable energy industries that are out-competing their US counterparts. Indeed, the global renewable energy sector is now a $1 trillion industry -- it's hard to ignore how quickly it's growing.


Read the story by the managing director and founder of Australia’s Future Super and former national director of GetUp, Simon Sheikh, on the Huffington Post - "Only A Fossil Would Fuel The World With Coal.”

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