Reuters, Bonn :
A U.S. architect of the Paris climate accord under ex-President Barack Obama has been working to bolster the pact at global talks in Germany, reckoning it matches long-term U.S. interests despite U.S. President Donald Trump plans to pull out.”I don’t want to see the Paris Agreement roll off the tracks,” Todd Stern, who was Obama’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, told Reuters during two-week talks ending on Thursday in Germany on a detailed “rule book” for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“That’s not in the interests of the United States,” he told Reuters. Stern is with the World Resources Institute think-tank at the Bonn meeting of almost 200 nations and also works at the Brookings Institution.
He, and many other delegates, said the United States has been concerned for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations to ensure that rules governing environmental pacts were strong and oblige China, for instance, to abide by the same standards as rich nations. In Bonn, the U.S. delegation is also insisting on strong rules for reporting and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions in a rare overlap between Obama’s and Trump’s interests. A rule book is due to be in place by the end of 2018 at a meeting in Poland.
A U.S. architect of the Paris climate accord under ex-President Barack Obama has been working to bolster the pact at global talks in Germany, reckoning it matches long-term U.S. interests despite U.S. President Donald Trump plans to pull out.”I don’t want to see the Paris Agreement roll off the tracks,” Todd Stern, who was Obama’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, told Reuters during two-week talks ending on Thursday in Germany on a detailed “rule book” for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“That’s not in the interests of the United States,” he told Reuters. Stern is with the World Resources Institute think-tank at the Bonn meeting of almost 200 nations and also works at the Brookings Institution.
He, and many other delegates, said the United States has been concerned for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations to ensure that rules governing environmental pacts were strong and oblige China, for instance, to abide by the same standards as rich nations. In Bonn, the U.S. delegation is also insisting on strong rules for reporting and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions in a rare overlap between Obama’s and Trump’s interests. A rule book is due to be in place by the end of 2018 at a meeting in Poland.
