BY: JESSICA BEUKER
It’s that time of year again; the annual climate gathering run by the UN saw experts, lawmakers and organizations gathering in Morocco this week to discuss the current state of the planet, and the current uphill battle against climate change.
This year’s conference is taking place from November 7-18, and some of the hot topics have revolved around Trump’s election – including the consequences it will have on the climate crisis – and coal.
According to IFLS, Michael Brune, head of the climate change pressure group, the Sierra Club, summed it up best. “Donald Trump has the unflattering distinction of being the only head of state in the entire world to reject the scientific consensus that humans are driving climate change.”
One of the concerns is that the Paris agreement – which took decades of hard work to make a reality – will suffer much damage at the hands of Trump. The agreement is legally binding now, and would take the US four years to pull out of it.
Amid all of the negative Trump talk, some good news found its way inside. France’s President Hollande, who was one of the conference’s keynote speakers, announced that France will shut down all of its coal-fired power plants by no later than 2023.
This big step comes alongside a number of other promising initiatives outlined by other nations across the globe. According to IFLS, by 2050, Germany aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 95 percent, while the UK will follow France and shut all of its coal-fired power plants down by 2025.
France is already a world leader in the fight against climate change. In 2015, France passed a law requiring all new rooftops to be either green or solar. Currently, it derives 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear fission. This new announcement only cements France’s position as the country to look towards in our relentless fight against climate change.
