G20 Summit: Climate Change Diplomacy in the Age of Trump Gets Complicated

Leaders of the world's largest economic powers will have a chance this weekend to show whether President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement strengthened their resolve to act on climate change—or whether it opened cracks in their solidarity.

If no separate climate action plan is approved by the
G20 members, that would be a statement that the U.S.
has shaken unity on global climate action

The G20 summit in Hamburg is the first top-level diplomatic gathering of all the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases since Trump's announcement, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the host, has pledged to put climate change high on the agenda.

"We cannot wait until every last person on Earth has been convinced of the scientific proof," Merkel said in a speech last week.

Even though a host of other contentious issues—trade, migration, North Korea's nuclear ambitions, and the fraught relationship between the U.S. and Russia—are likely to get more attention, Merkel has virtually guaranteed that the meeting will include a litmus test on climate fortitude. After she assumed her one-year presidency of the G20 in December, she set up a sustainability working group that has developed a detailed policy roadmap for the nations to slash carbon emissions. That G20 action plan will be before the group in Hamburg. Together, the G20 countries are responsible for 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas pollution.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “G20 Summit: Climate Change Diplomacy in the Age of Trump Gets Complicated.”

Direct Action doesn't motivate big carbon emitters

Australia’s largest listed, carbon intensive companies say management lost focus on carbon matters, abandoned energy projects and didn’t have the commercial imperative to produce long-term strategic action on reducing emissions after the carbon tax was repealed, new research finds.

Our research looked at the comparative views of emitters before and after the repeal of the carbon tax legislation, in interviews with 18 senior managers from nine carbon-intensive listed companies.

Two years have passed since Australia’s carbon tax was repealed. It was introduced by the Labor government and came into effect in 2012.

The carbon pricing scheme asked big emitters to pay for each tonne of emissions above a threshold of 25,000 tonnes, in carbon units, and these were at a fixed charge of: $23 a tonne in 2012, $24.15 a tonne in 2013 and $25.40 a tonne in 2014.

Read the piece on The Conversation - “Direct Action not as motivating as carbon tax say some of Australia’s biggest emitters.”