Tag Archives: Canada

Canada, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Erasing history, Greenland, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), NATO, Stephen Golub, USAID

Stephen Golub: This Is Happening Now in America

Springsteen punch

The Benicia Herald, July 12, 2026,  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

During Bruce Springsteen’s recently completed “Land of Hope and Dreams” concert tour, his “This Is Happening Now” speech in the middle of each show packed as much punch as his music. He delivered it just before his song, “My City of Ruins” – which, despite its title, is distinguished by its hopeful refrain: “Rise up!”

It’s in that spirit that I share the core of a Reddit post that quotes most of Springsteen’s speech (as delivered at his April 20 Newark concert). Following almost every quote, you’ll find italicized commentary by the post’s author, Chris Jordan of The Asbury Park Press. Jordan’s illuminating remarks back up Bruce’s statements with relevant documentation.

In a few instances, I supplement Jordan’s commentary with my own remarks, in brackets.

For me, the power of the speech culminates in Springsteen’s concluding message. It’s as uplifting as most of his songs.

Here’s what Springsteen said, then, along with Jordan’s explanatory comments (again, in italics) and my additional remarks (in brackets):

Bruce: “Our young men and women’s lives are at risk in an unwise and illegal war. This is happening now.”

The Iran war has been called illegal by members of Congress who say the action was unprovoked and a violation of international law as there was no imminent threat, and no Congressional approval was sought.

Bruce: “There are immigrants being held in for-profit detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign prisons. This is happening now.“

A U.S. District Judge ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security deporting immigrants who arrived here illegally to “third countries” is “not fine, nor is it legal.” The deportees should not be sent to where their “life or freedom would be threatened” because of their “race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The two largest private prison corporations reported profits of more than a billion dollars in total for second quarter, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

[As articulated by principled conservative authors in The Bulwark’s “A Season of Death and Fear” online post, two of the many other manifestations of current immigration policy can be found in the highly questionable shooting death (and apparent coverup) by ICE agents of a 35-year US resident in Texas and the possibly imminent deportation of a hard-working immigrant community in Ohio that has lived in America legally for years.]

Bruce: “Our Justice Department has thrown away its independence, and it takes its orders directly from a corrupt White House. They prosecute our president’s perceived enemies, they cover up for his misdeeds and protect his powerful friends. This is happening now.”

DOJ lawyers have lost credibility in the courts after ignoring court orders, misrepresented facts and made arguments with no basis in the law, said Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, an advocacy group for former DOJ workers. More than 3,300 attorneys left the Justice Department between Trump’s first day back in office and February 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Meanwhile, only about 800 attorneys have been hired.

Bruce: “The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children to death and disease, by dismantling USAID. It’s not on the front pages anymore but it’s happening now. People are dying.“

More than 757,000 people, the majority of them children, have died from the funding cuts to USAID, according to ImpactCounter, which tracks the effect of USAID cuts, as reported by the Health Policy Watch. There are also almost a million more malaria cases, over 700,000 affecting children.

The budget for USAID was slashed by Elon Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficacy, last year.

[A leading medical journal, The Lancet, estimates that within four years the USAID cuts could yield over 14 million deaths worldwide, 4.5 million of them children under five.]

Bruce: “We undermined NATO, the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. This is happening now.”

President Donald Trump has said that NATO, a defense alliance created after World War II, was a “paper tiger” and that he’s considering withdrawing America from the alliance.

[In contrast, as summarized by the online site Politico, he has repeatedly praised the authoritarian leaders of China, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and even totalitarian North Korea.]

Bruce: “We threaten our good neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars, Canada and (Denmark), we threaten them with predatory annexation of their land. This is happening now.”

Trump has repeatedly said Canada should be the 51st state and launched tariffs against our neighbor to the north, which has resulted in fewer Canadians visiting the Jersey Shore than in recent years, and also secured a political victory for the ruling Liberal Party, which was fading in the polls until Trump’s rhetoric reversed its fortunes. Meanwhile, Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said that Trump is “very serious” about acquiring Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish island off North America.

[At this past week’s NATO summit, Trump doubled down on his Greenland threat against Denmark, which lost more soldiers per capita as America’s ally in Afghanistan than the United States itself did.]

Bruce: “Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth. This is happening now.”

Trump’s declarations and executive orders have led to the altering and dismantling of slavery exhibits, such as one at the site of George Washington’s house in Philadelphia when he was president, the restoration of Confederate statues and other initiatives, say civil rights advocates, according to Reuters.

Bruce: “While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history. This is happening now.”

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, raised $2 billion from the Saudi Arabia government’s Public Investment Fund for his private equity fund and has collected more than $110 million in management fees from the Saudi government, according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA). He’s currently in negotiations with Iran, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia, to settle the war.

[Departing from past presidents’ practice of separating themselves from previous financial interests, Trump’s own businesses made an unprecedented $2.2 billion in 2025 alone, including from Saudi Arabian real estate deals, a massive crypto-currency venture with a criminal he pardoned and other crypto deals. Through June 2026, nearly a million people (that is, most of his crypto investors) lost over $3.8 billion on such deals.]

The sum of these transgressions is undermining America, Springsteen says:

“This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. To many, we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration and this president’s legacy. This is happening now,” Springsteen said.

“Honesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, humanity, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency — don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore — they do. They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we want to be, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children. So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people — by you. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.”

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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Canada, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Stephen Golub

Benician Stephen Golub: Funeral for a Friendship? Trump Spits at Polite, Pleasant, Insulted Canada.

And that’s not all we’re sorry about…

[Editor: Friend and colleague Stephen Golub wrote this awhile back (7/26/25) and I missed it. I’m posting now because it’s still timely, but also becuase I have a personal connection to Canada. My big sister is a longtime Canadian citizen and resides on Prince Edward Island. Our US president’s abysmal treatment of our northern neighbor is so incredibly shameful. – R.S.]

‘Canadians are the among the nicest and most polite people on the planet. Americans are blessed to have them as neighbors.’

 Stephen Golub, A Promised Land – America as a Developing Country
[sta_anchor id=”top” /]Strolling several years ago in Vancouver, Canada, I inadvertently crossed the street in front of a car after my light turned red but before the vehicle began moving. If you do this in San Francisco, the driver might toot and shout at you. In my native New York, you’d hear a loud honk and an even louder expletive.

The Vancouver motorist instead said, “Excuse me, did you know that you’re crossing against the light?”

Canadians are the among the nicest and most polite people on the planet. Americans are blessed to have them as neighbors.

Yet Donald Trump has been spitting in these wonderful folks’ faces, on everything from fentanyl to immigration to tariffs to statehood. His barbs portend long-term damage to what once seemed our two nations’ unbreakable goodwill. This potential funeral for a friendship says much about America’s shrinking place in the world.

The insults reach back to Trump’s first term, when he called Canada’s then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “very dishonest and weak,”  as well as “two-faced.”

Who in the world says that to a steadfast friend? To a country whose long border with ours has been peaceful for well over a century? To a nation that helps protect ours through its partnership in the North American Aerospace Defense Command? To a people whose armed forces sent over 40,000 troops to fight in our Afghanistan war, with 158 dying and thousands more injured (In contrast, Trump reportedly dodged the Vietnam-era draft due to a dodgy medical deferment facilitated by a doctor who was his father’s tenant.).

Typhoon Trump has proven even more catastrophic to the Canada relationship today, in his second term. Thankfully, he and Canada recently stepped back from the trade war brink, eliminating tariffs on most products – with certain major exceptions.

Nonetheless, could you blame Canadians for still distrusting Trump, given that he justified large tariffs back in January based on (bogus) claims of allegedly huge fentanyl imports and illegal immigration from north of the border:

“They’ve [Canada and Mexico] allowed, both of them, Canada very much so, they’ve allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn’t be here. They could’ve stopped them and they didn’t. And they’ve killed 300,000 people last year, my opinion, have been destroyed by drugs, by fentanyl. The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”

So how many tons of fentanyl and millions of people have actually entered America illegally from Canada?

Seizures and arrests provide some sense of scale: From October 2023 through September 2024, 43 pounds (not tons) of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border, in contrast with over 10 tons from Mexico. During that same period, fewer than 28,000 people were apprehended entering illegally from Canada, compared with over 1.5 million down south.

Putting aside the complex calculation of America’s relationship with our neighbor and friend Mexico, those figures clearly don’t justify such Trumpian lies, hostility and trade barriers against Canada.

Adding national insult to economic injury, Trump has notoriously declared that this proud country should be our 51st state:

“We’re taking care of their military. We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives… We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”

During a visit to Canada’s Nova Scotia province this summer, I got a glimpse of the damage he’s quickly done to our two nations’ bonds. The first hint was alcoholic – by which I mean the disappearance of U.S. beer, wine and spirits from many restaurant menus and liquor stores. Another sign was the plethora of Canada’s national maple leaf flags flying everywhere – a rejection of Trump’s 51st state slap and other insults.

As usual, Canadians were unfailingly friendly and polite during my visit, blaming neither my friends nor me for Trump’s affronts. But their perspective on our country has changed – as  have their visits to America, down by 22 to 40 percent since last year, depending on which category of travel we count.

The next president might restore some foreign faith in the United States if it we demonstrate renewed faith in friendship and alliances. But after being repeatedly burned, could we blame Canadians for remaining wary?

And it’s by no means just Canada. On a visit to Australia earlier this year, I heard rage about Trump’s tariffs; worry about American unreliability as China antagonizes our ally Down Under; and sympathy to the point that several Aussies said they feel sorry for us. Trump’s threats to take over Denmark’s territory, Greenland, is sparking similar ire by our loyal European partner (which, by the way, lost 52 soldiers fighting alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq).

With hundreds of thousands slaughtered by Russia’s invasion and bombardments, Ukraine endures Trump’s fickle promises of aid and his outrageous, dishonest Oval Office attack last February on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other European nations wonder if they’re next in line for American abandonment and Russian aggression.

True, Trump very recently and surprisingly voiced renewed support for Ukraine. But Trump could quickly do an about-face (as in the past) if Vladimir Putin simply offers him a soothing gesture or if his advisors whisper pro-Putin advice in his ear.

Canada and other countries saw first-term Trump as maybe an anomaly, something America could rebound from. His far more adversarial second term actions suggest that our allies must plan for a future in which they can no longer count on us. All the while, he cozies up to corrupt autocrats like Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Orban.

If I could make just one wish for Trump supporters who are friends and neighbors, as well as the many millions of other MAGA backers, it would be that they talk to Canadians about why so many are flying their maple leaf flags these days. In their polite way, our northern neighbors might help Americans grasp how Trump’s words and actions hurt both them and us.

Even examining the matter in a cold-hearted manner, the biggest winner in such a dialogue would be the United States. By alienating so many allies, we toss aside the “soft power” flowing from our influence, example and friendship. That power has protected, strengthened and enriched us for decades. We’d accordingly benefit if more Americans could see our nation through the eyes of foreigners.

Finally, just maybe, such chats might persuade some Americans of one more vital fact: What’s at stake in standing by our allies and shared values is not just friendship – it’s freedom, both here and abroad.

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

[sta_anchor id=”below” /]Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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Canada, Canadian oil production, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Fossil fuel subsidies, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Worldwide pandemic

Canada’s pandemic response sends $16 billion to fossils, just $300 million to clean energy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_of_petroleum
Extraction_of_petroleum | Flcelloguy/Wikimedia Commons
The Energy Mix, by Mitchell Beer, July 16, 2020

Canada’s pandemic response to date has sent just C$300 million to clean energy, compared to more than $16 billion to fossil fuels, according to new data released this week by Energy Policy Tracker, a joint effort by multiple civil society organizations including the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The totals include C$13.55 billion (listed as US$10.05 billion on the site) for 42 policies that deliver unconditional support to fossil fuel companies, C$1.59 billion for three fossil support policies that carry environmental conditions, plus C$300.5 million for unconditional clean energy funding.

“A considerably larger amount of public money committed to supporting the economy and people of Canada through monetary and fiscal policies in response to the crisis may also benefit different elements of the energy sector,” the tracker states. “However, these values are not available from official legislation and statements and therefore are not included in the database.”

The Canadian numbers are just one segment of a wider data summary, which “shows that at least US$151 billion of bailout cash has been spent or earmarked so far to support fossil fuels by the G20 group of large economies,” with only one-fifth of that total “conditional on environmental requirements such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions or cleaning up pollution,” The Guardian reports. “The G20 countries are directing about US$89 billion in stimulus spending to clean energy, despite most of those governments being publicly committed to the Paris agreement on climate change.”

The United States is lavishing $58 billion on fossil industries, compared to about $25 billion invested in clean energy, the research shows.

“At this point in history it’s clear that investing in fossil fuels is as lethal to global economies as it is to life on Earth,” tweeted Climate Action Network-Canada Executive Director Catherine Abreu. “Yet Canada has funnelled at least US$11.86 BILLION to fossils in recent months, while directing only $222.78 million to clean energy.”

“The COVID-19 crisis and governments’ responses to it are intensifying the trends that existed before the pandemic struck,” concluded IISD Energy Policy Tracker lead Ivetta Gerasimchuk.

“National and subnational jurisdictions that heavily subsidized the production and consumption of fossil fuels in previous years have once again thrown lifelines to oil, gas, coal, and fossil fuel-powered electricity,” she said. “Meanwhile, economies that had already begun a transition to clean energy are now using stimulus and recovery packages to make this happen even faster.”

Other organizations involved with the tracker include the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Oil Change International, the Overseas Development Institute, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

The Canadian figures show the federal government has been “completely captured by the oil industry,” Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart told The Canadian Press. “They just don’t understand how the world is changing.”

CP cites an internal Natural Resources Canada briefing, obtained by Greenpeace through an access to information request, that showed the pandemic “wreaking havoc right across the energy sector, including fossil fuels and renewables,” as early as mid-April. “This will challenge Canada’s climate and energy transformation agendas,” stated the document prepared for Deputy Minister Christyne Tremblay.

“An attached presentation deck from Tremblay’s department outlines the impacts, including the collapse in oil prices, plummeting demand for both oil and electricity, and a cleantech industry being brought to its knees,” CP writes. Cleantech “is heavily dominated by start-up enterprises and those in the research and development phase that are heavily reliant on capital investments,” the news agency adds, and “the onset of the pandemic threw ice water on those investments, including from the oil and gas sector itself as its own revenues dried up.”

CP says Clean Energy Canada Executive Director Merran Smith called on the government “to ensure this sector’s survival by making sure it is a big part of the COVID-19 recovery stimulus programs. She said that doesn’t mean investing just in things that generate clean power, like wind and solar farms and technology, but also in promoting the use of cleaner power, such as by electrifying cars and public transportation.”

The Guardian notes that the tracker results were released ahead of a G20 finance ministers’ meeting this weekend where post-pandemic economic stimulus will be on the agenda. “Some of the spending on fossil fuels is likely to be designed to quickly stabilize hard-hit industries, preserving jobs and preventing a worse recession,” the UK-based paper states. “However, green campaigners are concerned that so much of the money is flowing to companies with no conditions to force them to take even basic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or other pollution,” in spite of the “green strings” demanded by civil society groups and introduced by some countries.

“Economists and energy experts have already shown that green spending can [create] jobs and a higher return on investment in the short and longer term,” The Guardian notes. At the same time,  “as the data studied by Energy Policy Tracker is focused on the energy sector, the figures may not capture all of governments’ green spending. For instance, governments have been urged to spend on many ‘shovel-ready’ non-energy issues, such as cycle lanes, tree-planting, nature restoration, flood resilience, and enhanced broadband networks to help people work at home, all of which will also contribute to a green recovery.”

“We have some anecdotal evidence on these sectors which suggests that total green recovery numbers can be higher,” Gerasimchuk said. “Similarly, global environmentally harmful recovery numbers can be higher as there are measures leading to deforestation, land degradation, overfishing, etc. A lot of government support policies remain unquantified.”

Last week, the Corporate Europe Observatory warned that “fossil fuel fingerprints” were beginning to accumulate on the much-touted European Green Deal (EGD).

“Its mere existence is a positive first step; but is the deal really as good as they want us to believe?” the Observatory asks. “The fingerprints of industry, and in particular the fossil fuel industry, can be seen all over the EGD. Carbon trading will continue to allow big polluters to slow the transition, emissions reductions targets are too modest and too slow, fossil gas is kept as a transitional fuel, and public money will finance industry ‘false solutions’. The fossil fuel lobby is taking advantage of its privileged access to policy-makers, as well as the corona-crisis, to secure these gains.”

Climate Change, Fossil fuels, G7, Greenhouse gas emissions

Global Climate Talks: G7 leaders target zero-carbon economy

Repost from The Carbon Brief

G7 leaders target zero-carbon economy

Simon Evans & Sophie Yeo, 08 Jun 2015, 17:00
Third working party at G7 summit
Third working party at G7 summit. | Bundesregierung/Kugler

Global climate talks received a symbolic boost today, as the G7 group of rich nations threw their weight behind a long-term goal of decarbonising the global economy over the course of this century.

The joint communique from the leaders of Japan, Germany, the US, UK, Canada, Italy and France reaffirms their commitment to the internationally agreed target of limiting warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels. It also reiterates their commitment to deep cuts in emissions by 2050.

Today’s declaration goes a step further, however, backing a long-term goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions at the “upper end” of 40-70% below 2010 levels by 2050 and decarbonising completely “over the course of this century”.

These milestones are broadly in line with the path to avoiding more than 2C of warming, set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year. The IPCC said this would require “near zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century”.

The 40-70% reduction on 2010 levels by 2050 is the range for 2C set out by research organization Climate Analytics earlier this year. It also just about reaches the 70-95% range of emissions reduction by 2050 that would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C. A review of whether to adopt this tougher temperature target is expected to conclude at UN climate talks in Bonn this week.

Powering up Paris?

The G7 declaration calls this year’s UN talks in Paris “crucial for the protection of the global climate” and says: “We want to provide key impetus for ambitious results”. It promises to put climate protection “at the centre of our growth agenda”.

However, the G7 nations only account for 19% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd argued recently that the larger G20 needed to drive the planned global climate deal.

As such, the good will of the G7 is hardly enough to guarantee success in Paris on its own. In the run-up to the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen — variously described as a “failure”, “setback” or a “disaster” — the then-G8 group of leading nations said:

“We are committed to reaching a global, ambitious and comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen.”

The same 2009 G8 statement set a goal of cutting emissions by “at least” 50% by 2050 – within the 40-70% range set out by the G7 today. It said developed countries should collectively cut emissions by “80% or more” compared to 1990 levels.

G 7-group -photo
Group photo of the G7 leaders sitting together with their outreach guests on a bench. Source: Federal Government – Bundesregierung / Bergmann.

Zero carbon economy

Today’s text does not repeat this promise on developed country emissions. The novel element is its backing for potentially greater global ambition in 2050, along with complete decarbonisation by the end of this century.

Statements from NGOs — and some newspaper headlines — added their own interpretations to this new pledge. The Guardian said the leaders had “agreed on tough measures” that would cut emissions by “phasing out the use of fossil fuels”. The Financial Times headline  says “G7 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuels”.

Greenpeace said the text signalled the fossil fuel age was “coming to an end” and that coal, in particular, must be phased out in favour of 100% renewable energy. Christian Aid made similar points, asking global leaders to follow the UK in committing to phase out unabated coal. G7 nations continue to rely on large fleets of coal-fired power stations, whose combined emissions are more than twice Africa’s total.

The G7 language on decarbonisation this century is not specific, however, and does not promise an end to the use of coal or other fossil fuels. Instead, the language could imply reaching net-zero, where any remaining emissions are balanced by sequestration through afforestation or negative emissions technologies.

The most likely method of achieving negative emissions, biomass with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), is controversial because it might require very large areas of land to be set aside for fast-growing trees or other biomass crops.

The G7 “commit to” develop and deploy “innovative technologies striving for a transformation of the energy sectors by 2050”. The communique doesn’t explain which technologies would be considered “innovative”. However, the use of the plural term “energy sectors” perhaps points past electricity generation towards transport, heat and beyond.

Finance

The declaration is thin on new financial commitments – despite some high expectations heralded by chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement in May that Germany would double its contribution to international climate finance by 2020.

The communique says that climate finance is already flowing at “higher levels”. All G7 countries have pledged various sums of money into the UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) over the past year, although all countries’ cumulative contributions are still only around $10bn.

This is well short of the $100bn a year that rich countries have pledged to provide every year by 2020. A significant proportion of this is expected to be channelled through the GCF. So far, there is no clear roadmap on how this money will be scaled up over the next five years – a source of contention for developing countries, which rely upon international donations to implement their own climate actions.

In the statement, the G7 countries pledge to “continue our efforts to provide and mobilize increased finance, from public and private sources”.

This doesn’t equate to a commitment to actually scale up finance, Oxfam’s policy lead on climate Tim Gore tells Carbon Brief:

“They’re saying that it’s higher than it was, and now they’re going to try and maintain it at that higher level. What we were looking for was what Merkel did, and say from the level we’re at now, we’re going up towards 2020.”

The statement also says that the G7 nations “pledge to incorporate climate mitigation and resilience considerations into our development assistance and investment decisions”. This could have particular implications for Japan, which is still investing heavily in coal plants both domestically and abroad.

Conclusion

Despite its shortcomings, the stronger elements of the G7 communique were not easily won. Wording on the long term goal could reverberate at the UN negotiations taking place this week in Germany, sending a message about the pressure that countries such as Japan and Canada are under to toe the climate line.

Both nations have faced criticism for low ambition in their INDCs (still due to be finalised in Japan’s case), yet have nonetheless agreed to a statement pointing towards a decarbonised economy by the end of the century.

Alden Meyer, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, says:

“I think it shows the pressure that some of these laggard countries felt under from other countries and from the public in their own countries to not block the language. This is not a kumbaya moment that all of a sudden has transformed the long term goal discussion, and those who have been resisting good language in this agreement are suddenly going to turn around on decarbonisation in the long term goal. I think that’s the political significance.”