Hundreds of thousands of young people skipped school across the globe on Friday, 15 March to march through the streets for an international day of student protests aimed at pushing world leaders into action on climate change.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he “respected” Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord but that France would remain committed. The US president visiting France then hinted that his administration could shift its opinion.
The UN’s new climate chief admits she’s worried about President Donald Trump – but is confident that action to curb climate change is unstoppable. President Trump said he’d withdraw from the UN climate deal and stop funding the UN’s clean energy program. But former Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa said that the delay in any firm announcement suggests the issue is still unresolved.
This year, Earth Day coincides with the signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which takes place at UN Headquarters in New York. The Agreement was adopted by all 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015.
France seems to have achieved an unachievable triumph: uniting the world to seal a global climate pact. The Paris climate agreement, adopted on Saturday, was the culmination of more than a year of intense diplomatic efforts by France. Delegates and foreign dignitaries cheered Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, the host of the two-week talks, and gave him a standing ovation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazil's Dilma Rousseff met in Paris on the sidelines of the ongoing climate talks, and agreed to strengthen cooperation in a number of areas including a common position regarding global warming.
By Ban Ki-Moon (*) - For the nearly nine years that I have been Secretary-General, I have travelled the world to the front-lines of climate change, and I have spoken repeatedly with world leaders, business people and citizens about the need for an urgent global response
In the wake of the Paris horrific coordinated attacks, leaders from the world's top economies ended on Monday a two-day summit at a resort in Turkey with a vow to step up the fight against terrorism. The attacks that left 132 people dead and hundreds of injured shrouded the nine hours of formal talks that were already set to include discussions of terrorism and a refugee crisis stemming from the mass exodus of people from war-torn Syria.
Global temperatures are set to rise more than one degree above pre-industrial levels according to the UK's Met Office. Figures from January to September this year are already 1.02C above the average between 1850 and 1900.