PLEA Network

2 October 2018, Climate Home News, Leaked US critique of climate report sets stage for political showdown in Korea. Confidential US comments on a landmark global warming report raise doubts about the science behind it, warn that it risks crimping economic development and advocate for carbon-catching technologies. The nine pages of comments on a draft of the UN report reflect the views of multiple government agencies and reveal a US diplomatic corps trying to speak to multiple constituencies – the global community, their own domestic interests and the White House. The comments, which Climate Home News has seen, also set the scene for a political battle over the report summary, which is up for negotiation in South Korea this week after two years of preparation and due to be published on Monday. Broadly, Washington argued that scientists had downplayed the scale of the challenge to limiting global warming to 1.5C – the lower target of the Paris Agreement. To meet that challenge, the US called for more emphasis on clean technologies that the Trump administration has consistently supported – including carbon capture and storage and nuclear power. At the same time, the US warned, measures to tackle global warming must not interfere with cutting poverty worldwide. This is the first time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has studied the effects of a global temperature rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, rather than 2C, and how it can be achieved. The final “summary for policymakers” (SPM) will set the basis for efforts to raise national pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are currently on track for a rise of around 3C by 2100. “The SPM narrative fails to communicate the scale of the global technological and economic challenge to meet the 1.5C objective,” the US said in its comments. “The SPM implies that these challenges will be minor and any trade-offs easily resolved, whereas the underlying report and the published literature clearly demonstrate the scope and depth of these barriers to limiting emissions consistent with 1.5C.” Read more here