Annie Sneed reports that countries will map out how to meet their carbon-reduction pledges; U.S. governors and mayors will step up. A shadow looms over this year’s United Nations climate change meeting. The 23rd Conference of the Parties—or its shorthand, COP 23—begins Monday in Bonn, Germany. It commences just five months after Pres. Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius—or ideally, 1.5 degrees C.
The international community strongly reprimanded the Trump administration for its decision, and it has vowedto disregard that setback and forge ahead at COP23. No other countries have reneged on the accord. Nations have a lot to figure out. The 2015 Paris accord “was a landmark agreement,” says Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. “But it left many of the details about [implementation] still to be negotiated.” At COP 23, country representatives will work out the nitty-gritty of how to execute the accord, which will ultimately determine its long-term success. “This is quite a consequential meeting,” says Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “It represents an important early test of [nations’] resolve to honor what they agreed on in Paris.”
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