Unit Nine Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
Part One Warm-up Activity:Read the Following news articles and answer the questions:
What is global warming?
What is Paris Climate Accord about?
Why did Trump pull out of the agreement? What would be the influences?
1.Trump unwise to pull out of Paris climate accord
By Chris Peterson ( China Daily )Updated: 2017-06-10 07:12:38
All of a sudden, the world's power balance is shifting, with China and to a lesser extent the European Union as the main beneficiaries. Most observers feel US President Donald Trump's rambling speech announcing the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement marked a point at which he unwittingly yielded international influence to China, whose economy is steadily growing and is on track to become the largest in the world soon.
Newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to react after Trump's speech. Paying tribute to past ties between France and the US, he said he respected Trump's decision but at the same time assured US scientists working on climate change that they would receive a warm welcome in France. He urged the world "to make our planet great again".
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe would depend less on the US in the future, ahead of a meeting with Premier Li Keqiang in Berlin. "We are living in times of global uncertainty," she said, "and see our responsibility to expand our partnership ... and push for a world order based on law."
2.Trump Pulls Out of Paris Climate AgreementBY SARAH GLEIM
In what could be the Trump administration's final blow to reversing climate change, President Donald Trump today made the unprecedented decision to break from the rest of the world and pull out of the Paris Agreement.
The landmark Paris Agreement sets goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preventing globa
A total of 196 countries ratified the Paris Agreement in 2015, and it went into effect in November 2016. Only two nations currently are not part of the agreement: Syria and Nicaragua, countries that produce nowhere near the greenhouse gas emissions of the United States. Because President Barack Obama joined the Paris accord without a vote by the Senate, Trump can also remove the U.S. from the agreement without a vote. But it won't be quick. The terms of the agreement say the U.S. can't withdraw until November 2020.
"With limited federal action on climate change, there are huge concerns," says Keya Chatterjee, executive director of US Climate Action Network, via email. "Now only the states with progressive governments will receive the solar and wind jobs that are growing so fast. Trump's actions will leave a lot of America behind."
Chatterjee says the impacts of climate change will continue, and that's the biggest worry. "We do not have a functional federal government capable of preparing for those impacts and protecting lives," she says.
Ben Sanderson, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and co-author of a commentary on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement published in the journal Nature Climate Change in February 2017, says this move signals that the current administration doesn't consider climate change to be an urgent or pressing issue. "This is at odds with the vast majority of other countries," he says via email, "and also with a number of states and leading businesses within the U.S."
l temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F). Trump promised during his presidential campaign to "cancel" U.S. participation in the deal despite many world and business leaders urging him to stay, including Tesla founder Elon Musk, who tweeted he was leaving the president's advisory councils because "Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."
Sanderson and his co-author, Reto Knutti, determined a withdrawal by the United States or a failure to meet its targets would "present severe challenges for the international community to meet its emissions goals."
"The 2 degrees Celsius target is incredibly difficult to achieve, even in ideal conditions where all major emitters are unified in their resolve to rapidly reduce emissions," he says via email. "Most future scenarios that achieve the 2 degrees Celsius target require global emissions to reach zero by mid-century, with net negative emissions after that. This requires two things: rapid decarbonization (beyond the levels in the Paris Agreement) by all countries in the near future, and also the development of technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere at large scales by mid-century. Without U.S. participation, this would likely be impossible."
That's due in part because the U.S. is the second worst contributor in the world of carbon dioxide — only China emits more. In 2015, the U.S. released nearly 5.2 million kilotons of carbon dioxide, more than all European Union countries combined. That accounts for about 18 percent of the world's global emissions. If other countries follow the U.S., Sanderson and Knutti surmise that as much as 350 million kilotons of additional carbon dioxide would be emitted into the atmosphere.
That could lead to higher temperatures, rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, heat waves, crop damage and flooding in coastal cities.
Not everyone is disappointed by the news of the U.S. pulling out the Paris Accord. More than 20 U.S. senators sent a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw from the agreement, writing "remaining in it [the Paris Agreement] would subject the United States to significant litigation risk that could upend your Administration's ability to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan."
The Heritage Foundation also has been vocal in its opposition against the agreement for being nothing more than symbolic.
The biggest question remains whether the remaining countries will stay committed, and so far it appears they will. But Chatterjee thinks now is the time for cities, states and businesses to also step up and take leadership roles.
"It's always wise to act, no matter how late we are. I use the analogy of a sunburn when thinking about transitioning off fossil fuels," she says. "You should get out of the sun when you start to feel the burn, but it is never too late to get out of the sun, and you might just save your life. Similarly, it's always a good idea to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, and now is the time for every person in this country who cares about the future to take action to do so."
Schulz to Trump: Dropping Paris agreement means no trade talks
‘Whoever wants to have access to our market … needs to respect the European standards,’ Schulz says.
Martin Schulz
June 1, 2017 12:46 pm
Germany's challenger for the chancellorship, Martin Schulz, vowed Thursday to retaliate against U.S. President Donald Trump's potential withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement by refusing to engage in transatlantic trade talks.
Referring to trade negotiations with the U.S., which ran until the end of last year but are now on ice, Schulz said it would be impossible to grant better market access to the U.S. if it did not respect climate protection rules.
"If the U.S. drops out of the climate agreement ... for European trade policy, this means that American production sites don't need to abide by the climate goals," said the Social Democratic candidate, who was speaking at the WDR Europa Forum in Berlin. "That is a competitive distortion against which we can only protect ourselves by saying: Whoever wants to have access to our market, and the European market is the biggest market in the world, needs to respect the European standards."
Schulz, who hopes to beat Chancellor Angela Merkel in federal elections in September, said this logic of ensuring the enforcement of European standards was the reason why he supported free trade agreements in general.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday indicated interest in resuming talks on a transatlantic trade pact. Ross said it "makes sense ... to work towards a solution that increases overall trade while reducing our trade deficit.”
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