President Joe Biden on Friday offered his support to the United Auto Workers, as he addressed their strike aimed at the Big Three auto makers.
Auto companies have seen record profits because of the “extraordinary skill and sacrifices” of UAW workers, Biden said in a brief speech at the White House.
“Those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers,” the president added.
“The companies have made some significant offers, but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW,” he also said.
Biden gave his remarks after about 12,700 workers went on strike early Friday as their union and the Big Three automakers failed to reach an agreement before a contract expired.
It’s a targeted strike at a Ford Motor F, -0.08%
plant in Michigan, a General Motors GM, +0.86%
plant in Missouri and a Stellantis NV STLA, +2.18%
plant in Ohio.
The presidential race in 2024 could be a rematch of 2020’s contest between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who has won over some union households that historically have backed Democrats like Biden rather than Republicans.
Biden got more support than Trump from union households in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, but Trump got more support from such households in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Edison Research exit polls.
Trump has seized on concerns that the car industry’s shift toward electric vehicles CARZ,
which the Biden administration has promoted, could hurt American workers. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” the former president said Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform.
On Friday, Biden said he hopes the UAW and car companies “can return to the negotiation table to forge a win-win agreement,” and he said he’s sending two administration officials to Detroit — Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a senior adviser.
GM posted a 2022 net profit of $11.04 billion, up from $10.38 billion in 2021, while Ford recorded a 2022 net profit of $7.62 billion, up from $6.43 billion in the prior year. For Stellantis, the parent company for brands such as Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, last year’s net profit was $17.83 billion, up from $15.12 billion.
UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement after Biden’s speech that union members “agree with Joe Biden when he says ‘record profits mean record contracts.’”
Fain also said: “Working people are not afraid. You know who’s afraid? The corporate media is afraid. The White House is afraid. The companies are afraid.”
One of the hottest movies of the summer is the staggeringly good biopic “Oppenheimer,” about the man who oversaw the frantic race to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.
The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on Aug 6, 1945 was a fission-style device. This also happens to be the same basic physics behind nuclear reactors that are in use today. It’s a reminder that technology can be, at its essence, agnostic: Whether it is used for malevolent or benevolent purposes (in nuclear fission’s instance, an instrument of death or clean, carbon-free electricity) depends upon the intent of the user.
These percentages are likely to rise as global demand for electricity — and concerns about global warming and climate change — rise. This will present opportunities for long-term oriented investors. The lion’s share of this demand — about 70%, says the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), will come from India, which the United Nations says is now the world’s most populous country, China, and Southeast Asia. Put another way, “the world’s growing demand for electricity is set to accelerate, adding more than double Japan’s current electricity consumption over the next three years,” says Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.
While fossil fuels remain the dominant source of electricity generation worldwide — the Central Intelligence Agency estimates that it provides about 70% of America’s electricity, 71% of India’s and 62% of China’s, for example—the IEA report says future demand will be met almost exclusively from two sources: renewables and nuclear power. “We are close to a tipping point for power sector emissions,” the IEA says. “Governments now need to enable low-emissions sources to grow even faster and drive down emissions so that the world can ensure secure electricity supplies while reaching climate goals.”
“ The Biden administration is a big booster of nuclear energy. ”
It’s helpful that the Biden administration is a big booster of nuclear energy, which the White House sees as an integral part of its broader effort to move the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. The Department of Energy says that the country’s 93 reactors generate more than half of America’s carbon-free electricity. But price pressures from wind, solar and natural gas (which the feds call “relatively clean” even though it emits about 60% of coal’s carbon levels) have putseveral reactors out of business in recent years.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law in November 2021 includes $6 billion, spread out over several years, for the so-called Civil Nuclear Credit Program, designed to keep reactors — and the high-paying jobs that come with them — running. If a plant were to close, it would “result in an increase in air pollutants because other types of power plants with higher air pollutants typically fill the void left by nuclear facilities,” the administration says. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said the Biden administration is “using every tool available” to get the country powered by clean energy by 2035.
The private sector is beginning to stir. Last week, Maryland-based X-Energy said it would build up to 12 reactors in Central Washington state, for Energy Northwest, a public utility. These wouldn’t be the behemoth-type reactors we’re used to seeing, but “advanced small, nuclear reactors.” X-Energy, which is privately held, has also been selected by Dow DOW, -1.40%
to construct a similar facility in Texas.
Other companies are also rolling out new technology to meet demand. Nuclear fusion — a breakthrough in that it creates more energy than the Oppenheimer-era fission model and at a lower cost — is likely to be the basis for reactors in the years ahead; the Washington, D.C.-based Fusion Industry Association thinks the first fusion power plant could come online by 2030. After seven rounds of funding, one fusion company, Seattle-based Helion Energy, is currently valued at around $3.6 billion, and appears headed for a public offering.
Here too, the Biden administration is getting involved. In May, the Department of Energy announced $46 million in funding for eight other fusion companies. “We have generated energy by drawing power from the sun above us. Fusion offers the potential to create the power of the sun right here on Earth,” says Granholm.
There are several opportunities here for long-term investors. You can pick your way through any number of publicly held companies, including more traditional utilities, or spread your bet across the industry through a handful of exchange-traded funds. The largest of these is the Global X Uranium Fund URA, +0.78%,
with about $1.6 billion in assets. It’s up about 9% year-to-date. The VanEck Uranium + Nuclear Energy Fund NLR, +0.41%
is up almost 10% and sports a 1.8% dividend yield. These are respectable year-t0-date returns, even though they lag the S&P 500 SPX, +0.32%
(up close to 19%) by a wide margin.
Democrats largely have closed ranks behind President Joe Biden ahead of next year’s election, but he isn’t completely without challengers for the party’s nomination.
Author and activist Marianne Williamson has thrown her hat in the ring, pursuing a longshot bid that comes after her 2020 presidential campaign fizzled out before the Iowa caucuses.
Why isn’t she falling in line and supporting her party’s incumbent president? What’s her pitch to people who think she’s not a serious candidate? What are her top economic proposals?
Williamson, 70, tackled those questions and more in a phone interview earlier this week.
Our Q&A with the Democratic presidential hopeful has been edited for clarity and length.
MarketWatch: In a nutshell, could you explain why you’re running for president?
Williamson: I’m running for president because I believe that some things need to be said and some changes need to be made, in order to repair some serious damage that’s been done to our democracy, to our country, to our people and to our environment over the last 50 years.
MarketWatch: You’ve talked about running to address “systemic economic injustices endured by millions of Americans” because of the “undue influence of corporate money on our political system.” What do you see as the top examples of that?
Williamson: During the 1970s, the average American worker had decent benefits, could afford a home, could afford a yearly vacation, could afford a car and could afford to send their child to college. In the last 48 years, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1% of Americans. That transfer has decimated our middle class. We are now at a point where if you are among 20% of Americans, then the economy’s doing pretty well for you. But, unfortunately, that 20% is surrounded by a vast sea of economic despair. We have 60,000 people in the United States who die every year because they can’t afford healthcare XLV, -1.11%,
one in four Americans living with a medical debt, and 18 million Americans unable to fill the prescriptions that their doctors give to them.
If you are in the club in America, if you are making it in America — and I have sold some books, so I understand the high side of the free market and have benefited, and I’m grateful for that — but no conscious persons wants to feel that they create wealth at the expense of other people having a chance. That is not American. It’s not what the American Dream is supposed to be.
I’m not trying to whitewash and romanticize American capitalism before this era. I’m not saying we were ever perfect, but it does seem to me that when I was growing up, the social consensus is that we were supposed to try. We knew that the higher good was that there would be this balance between individual liberty, including economic liberty, and a concern for the common good. But today concern for the common good has become almost derided as some quaint notion, and that we shouldn’t really give much more than lip service to it. And that’s a lot of human suffering that occurs because of that change in the social contract.
MarketWatch: Here’s kind of a two-part question. What would be your top economic priorities, and how in particular would you address high inflation and the recent banking KBE, -1.65% crisis?
Williamson: I’d like to see universal healthcare. I want to see tuition-free college at state colleges and universities, which is what we had in this country until the 1960s. There should be free childcare. There should be paid family leave. There should be guaranteed sick pay and a livable wage. And I think Americans are waking up to the fact that those things that I just mentioned are considered moderate issues in every other advanced democracy. They should not be considered left-wing fringe issues. They are granted to the citizens of every other advanced democracy.
That was your first question. The second has to do with high inflation. A lot of that high inflation has to do with price gouging by huge corporations, whether it has to do with food companies, transportation companies and so forth. All of those CEOs should testify before Congress and talk about the ways that they have — for the sake of their own profits — gouged the American people, particularly at such a time as this. And this is what happens when we normalize such a lack of conscience and such a lack of ethics within our system.
In terms of what happened with the bank in Silicon Valley SIVBQ, -3.39%,
which is what your third question was, right? I think the depositors should be made whole, but the bank executives who were taking multimillion-dollar bonuses for themselves, both before and right after the crash, they certainly should not get those bonuses. And also it’s concerning that some of the tech investors that would benefit the most from those deposits were the ones who caused the run on the bank. I don’t think that they should receive the benefit of what happens when those deposits are made whole. But the average depositor absolutely should be made whole in such cases.
MarketWatch: You mentioned free tuition and child care. Where would the funding for that come from?
Williamson: The funding should come, first of all, from taxation. The 2017 tax cut in this country was a $2 trillion tax cut, and 83 cents of every dollar went to the highest-earning corporations and individuals. Now that tax cut also included the middle-class tax cut, and the middle-class tax cut was good.
That tax cut for the highest earners should be repealed, but the middle-class tax cut should be put back in immediately.
Secondly, we should stop all the corporate subsidies. Why are we giving subsidies to these companies that are already making multibillions of dollars in profit and often then price gouging the American people?
Third, I believe there should be a wealth tax. If somebody has $50 million, I don’t have any problem with their paying an extra 2% tax. And if they have $1 billion, let them pay another 1%. Somebody with a $50 million portfolio, much less $1 billion in assets, would not even feel that change, but the changes in people’s lives that would be created by those shifts would be huge.
MarketWatch: Your campaign often gets described as a real longshot bid. Why are you running when so many people say you have a low chance for success?
Williamson: Well, certainly Donald Trump was considered a longshot. For that matter, when he began Barack Obama was considered a longshot. Surely we remember when Hillary Clinton was considered a shoo-in.
MarketWatch: A recent Monmouth University poll of Democratic voters found 11% had a favorable view of you, 16% had an unfavorable view, 21% had no opinion, and 52% had not heard of you. How do you win over those voters who have an unfavorable view, and how do you reach the folks who haven’t heard of you?
Williamson: Well, there was a poll that came out last week that put me at 10%, including 18% with independents and 21% with people under 30.
It’s very difficult for someone like myself to get the message out when you have such institutional resistance to my even being in the conversation, and that is displayed in various ways. But there is independent media today. God knows there’s TikTok, where my information seems to be doing quite well.
This early, no candidate should be allowing the polls to determine their path forward. I didn’t go into this expecting the approval of institutional forces. And I, as a matter of fact, expected the kind of resistance that I’ve received, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that a certain agenda be placed before the American people, and I am providing that option — the option of that alternative agenda.
I believe that agenda is the way for the Democrats to win in 2024. But even more importantly, I think it’s the agenda that will lead to the repair of this country.
MarketWatch: You mentioned TikTok, and that has been a hot topic in Washington, D.C., in recent weeks. Do you have a view on the Democratic and Republican proposals to ban TikTok in the U.S.?
Williamson: I think the United States government does need to be concerned with tech XLK, -1.00%
surveillance, but I wish they were as concerned when it comes to American-run companies as when it comes to Chinese. It’s a serious issue, it’s a valid issue — the whole issue of surveillance. But it’s a gnarly issue as well, and rushing to shut something down, which is so obviously a platform depended on by millions and millions of Americans for information sharing, is never something that should be done lightly.
MarketWatch: Some Americans may know you only for your spiritual work, and these folks may not think you’re a serious presidential candidate. The White House press secretary indicated she’s in that camp. What’s your message to win those folks over?
Williamson: First of all, I don’t think of my campaign as quote-unquote trying to win anyone over. There’s something that I read years ago that has always guided my work: “If there’s something you genuinely need to say, there’s someone out there who genuinely needs to hear it.” I am speaking to people who I know agree with me. I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t aware that millions of people agree with me.
I think it’s very sad that the president would allow a presidential press podium to be used to mock a political opponent, and I think that many people were and are offended by that. This is a democracy. We should have as many voices out there as possible. We should have as many people running in an election as feel moved. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. There are ideas on the left and ideas on the right. There are ideas all across the spectrum, and this is a point in American history where we as Americans should hear them all.
MarketWatch: What do you think are some of the main things that President Biden has gotten right, and in what areas has he gone wrong?
Williamson: Well, the first thing he did right was he defeated Donald Trump. The president has taken an incremental approach to America’s problems, and I believe that he does wish to alleviate the suffering of many people whose lives are affected by some deeply unjust systems. But I don’t think that the alleviation of stress is enough right now. We need fundamental economic reform.
We also need a serious answer to climate change, and the president’s approval of the Willow project is not that. The president has said that he recognizes that climate change is an existential crisis, and yet he has given more oil CL00, +0.34%
permits than even Donald Trump did, and he has approved the Willow project.
The Democratic House and Senate — they did cut child poverty in half with the child tax credit, but then, when that expired six months later, they didn’t bother to permanentize it.
These are the kinds of half-measures and incremental measures which are not enough to change the fundamental economic patterns in this country that lead to so much chronic economic anxiety and despair.
Joe Biden is shown in conversation in August 2019 with Marianne Williamson during an event for Democratic presidential candidates in Clear Lake, Iowa.
AFP via Getty Images
MarketWatch: One thing that comes up often with President Biden is his age, which is 80, while you’re 70. Do you think his age should be a concern, or is it ageism to bring it up?
Williamson: I think the individual has to consider this themselves. I have a problem, of course, contributing to the conversation because of the issue of ageism. But on the other hand, everybody can see for themselves what they can see for themselves.
I can only say if I were 80, I wouldn’t be running. But you know, I will not take potshots at the president, and I think that veers into potshots.
MarketWatch: Let’s talk about taking on Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or whomever the Republican nominee ends up being. Why do you think you’re the Democrat who could end up beating one of them?
Williamson: Republicans are going to throw some big lies at the Democrats in 2024, and the only way that we’re going to defeat them, in my opinion, is to tell some big truths. Franklin Roosevelt said we would not have to worry about a fascist takeover in this country as long as democracy delivered on its promises. Democracy has not delivered on its promises. The only way to beat Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis in 2024 is to propose an agenda in which democracy once again delivers on its promises to the majority of the American people. And that would mean the issues I mentioned before: universal healthcare, tuition-free college, free child care, a guaranteed livable wage and paid family leave. Those are given to the citizens in every other advanced democracy, and there is no good reason whatsoever why they are not delivered to the average citizen in the United States.
MarketWatch: There are Democrats who could be challenging President Biden for the party’s 2024 nomination, but they aren’t and instead they’re supporting him. Why aren’t there more efforts in the party to get people to run for president?
Williamson: Well, you’d have to ask them why they’re not running. But there’s clearly a trope that the field should clear, and everybody should simply get in line with the opinion of the Democratic establishment that Biden is the man because they have decided so. I don’t see it that way. I believe the Democratic primary voters — and independent voters and anyone else, if it’s an open primary — they should decide who the Democratic candidate is. To me, that’s what democracy is. That’s what elections are about.
MarketWatch: The Democratic Party is not expected to hold presidential primary debates for 2024. What can you do to change that and get some time on a debate stage?
Williamson: Well, I hope to have a successful campaign. I hope to have high poll numbers. I hope to have a lot of people in those primary states yelling foul. It’s a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The American people should hear what their options are, and that’s what a debate would be. If enough people realize that and believe it and make laws about it, then that is what will happen.
I think sometimes there’s a kind of learned powerlessness on the part of the American people today. We forget the radicalism of the American experiment, which is that the governance of this country is supposed to be in our hands. But the American people have been trained to expect too little and almost trained to give up the power of independent thought. I hope that my campaign and other things that occur in this campaign season will awaken people, and I think a certain kind of awakening is happening already.
MarketWatch: We’re a financially focused publication, so here’s a question along those lines. I looked at your financial disclosure from your 2020 presidential run. It showed some investments in big public companies like Apple AAPL, -0.58%
and Mastercard MA, +0.27%
…
Williamson: Wait, what are you talking about?
MarketWatch: That’s from your 2019 executive-branch personnel public financial disclosure report. It shows investments in various stocks and funds. The question — for our readers who are investors or people saving for retirement — is could you describe your own approach to investing and preparing for retirement?
Williamson: Socially responsible investing, and that’s why I said, “Whoa, what?” Because I believe in investing in socially responsible companies.
MarketWatch: One last question: What else would you like people to know?
Williamson: America has some serious problems, but we have infinite potential to solve those problems. We need to revisit our first principles, as John Adams said, and find that place in our hearts where, as Americans, as adults in this generation, we recognize that this profound idea of American democracy is put in our hands for safekeeping. And that doesn’t just give us rights; it gives us responsibilities. The political system in the United States speaks to us too often like we’re children, like we’re seventh-graders. Our public dialogue is too often on this kind of seventh-grade level. This is not a time to be an immature thinker, and it’s not a time to get into mean-spiritedness or cynicism either. If we allow ourselves to rise to the occasion, no matter what our politics are, we’re going to repair what has been broken, and we are going to initiate a new beginning. I think that’s possible. Other generations have done it, and we can do it, too.
MarketWatch: Thank you for being available to chat.
For the first time ever, rich nations, including a top-polluting U.S., will pay for the climate-change damage inflicted upon poorer nations.
These smaller economies are often the source of the fossil fuels CL00, +0.19%,
minerals PICK, -0.20%
and other raw materials behind the developed world’s modern conveniences and technologicial advancement, including many practices responsible for the Earth-warming emisisons. And yet the developing world shoulders the worst of the droughts, deadly heat, ruined crops and eroding coastlines that take lives and eat into economic growth.
The deal, called “loss and damage” in summit shorthand, was struck as the U.N.’s Conference of Parties, or COP27, gaveled to a close near dawn Sunday in Egypt. Official talks ended Friday, but negotiations extended into the weekend.
It was a big win for poorer nations which have long sought money — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate-worsened floods, famines and storms despite contributing little directly to the pollution that heats up the globe. It took last-minute, pre-summit negotiations to even get the topic on the official agenda.
“Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice,” said Seve Paeniu, the finance minister of island nation Tuvalu, according to the Associated Press. “We have finally responded to the call of hundreds of millions of people across the world to help them address loss and damage.”
“ ‘Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice.’ ”
— Seve Paeniu, finance minister for Tuvalu
Pakistan’s environment minister, Sherry Rehman, said the establishment of the fund “is not about dispensing charity.” Pakistan, hit by devastating drought and more, dominated climate-change headlines this year.
“It is clearly a down payment on the longer investment in our joint futures,” she said, speaking for a coalition of the world’s poorest nations.
How does COP27 ‘loss and damage’ work? And where’s China?
According to the agreement, the fund would initially draw on contributions from developed countries and other private and public sources such as international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
While major emerging economies such as China wouldn’t automatically have to contribute, that option remains on the table. This is a key demand by the European Union and the U.S., who argue that China and other large polluters currently classified as “developing” countries have the financial clout and responsibility to pay their way.
The fund would be largely aimed at the most vulnerable nations, though there would be room for middle-income countries that are severely battered by climate disasters to get aid.
Getting serious about methane
Attention on methane, a more-potent but shorter-lasting greenhouse gas than carbon, was considered a major win at the summit. Some 150 countries have now signed on to the voluntary Global Methane Pledge, an official effort to cap the release of the GHG whose reduction presents perhaps the easiest way to reduce the global warming.
With the pledge, countries representing 45% of global methane emissions have vowed to reduce their emissions by 30% by 2030. If methane-reduction pledges are met, the result would be equivalent to eliminating the GHG emissions from all of the world’s cars, trucks, buses and all two- and three-wheeled vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency.
COP27 talks wrapped without concrete progress on the contentious issue of shifting an overall 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit from a voluntary marker to an established requirement of nations. Most voluntary pacts among nations and private entities, including a vow by Amazon.com AMZN, -0.75%,
Ford Motor F, +0.58%,
Apple AAPL, +0.38%
and others signing on to a “First Movers” pledge, loosly use the 1.5-degree limit set in 2015 when talks took place in Paris.
Private banks, insurers and institutional investors representing $130 trillion said they would align their investments with the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, toward a pledge to net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050. Advocacy groups cheer the pledge and its expanding roster but are also keeping up pressure on the signatories to speed up progress toward this goal and to stop undermining the pledge with fossil-fuel investment.
The Egypt pact was also void of firmer language on emissions cutting and the desire by some officials to target all fossil fuels NG00, +1.16%
for a phase-down.
Natural gas, which is relatively cheaper to produce than other fossil fuels, has been the major alternative to more-polluting coal in electricity generation. Still, it has its own emissions risk.
In the U.S., for example, electricity is the most common energy source used for cooking — electricity often powered by gas. Still, about 38% of U.S. households use natural gas directly for cooking, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Natural gas providers also own an established pipeline infrastructure that may serve alternative energy, and is pushed by the industry as a viable alternative alongside solar, wind ICLN, -0.15%
and other means. The industry also promotes its efforts to cap methane leaks.
“ ‘It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers.’”
— Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock
With fossil fuels in their sight, the European Union and other nations fought back at what they considered backsliding in the Egyptian presidency’s overarching cover agreement and threatened to scuttle the rest of the process, while advancing their own draft. The package was revised again, removing most of the elements Europeans had objected to but adding none of the heightened ambition they were hoping for, the AP said.
Egypt has played a unique role as host, representative of Africa, which sits at the front lines of those hurt by climate change and yet, remaining loyal to its own fossil-fuel ambitions and those of OPEC nations.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock voiced frustration.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers XOM, -0.87%
The agreement includes a veiled reference to the benefits of natural gas as low- emission energy, despite many nations calling for a phase down of natural gas, which does contribute to climate change.
Fossil-fuel industry’s presence
At least 636 representatives of the fossil fuel industry registered to attend the summit, a 25% increase over the industry’s presence last year, according to an analysis released by three advocacy groups.
More fossil fuel lobbyists are on the roster than any single national delegation, besides the UAE who has registered 1,070 delegates compared to 176 last year, according to a report from Corporate Accountability, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Global Witness (GW).
Frances Colón, senior director for International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, found plenty of fault with this round of talks.
“The final text reflects the outsized and corrupting presence of fossil fuel and big agricultural lobbyists at COP27, compounded by a lack of ambition from key, high-emitting countries,” she said, in a statement. “The agreement makes only a passing reference to the 1.5-degree Celsius warming goal and does not include any new language on phasing down or phasing out all fossil fuels RB00, -0.09%
— the only way to reach emissions reduction goals and secure a livable future.”
Colón also worried that the official statement did not adequately advance efforts. World leaders failed to reference the twin, interlocking crises of nature loss and climate change, and declined to link COP27 to next month’s U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal.
“ ‘The agreement makes only a passing reference to the 1.5-degree Celsius warming goal and does not include any new language on phasing down or phasing out all fossil fuels — the only way to reach emissions reduction goals and secure a livable future.’”
— Frances Colón of the Center for American Progress
While the new agreement doesn’t ratchet up calls for reducing emissions, it does retain language to keep alive the voluntary global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The Egyptian presidency kept offering proposals that harkened back to 2015 Paris language which also mentioned a looser goal of 2 degrees.
This year’s pact also neglected to toughen the main sticking point from the previous COP, in Glasgow last year. At that time, China and India united to dig in unless coal language was softened. Nations this year did not expand on last year’s call to phase down global use of “unabated coal” even though India and other countries pushed to include oil and natural gas in language from Glasgow.
“We joined with many parties to propose a number of measures that would have contributed to this emissions peaking before 2025, as the science tells us is necessary. Not in this text,” the United Kingdom’s Alok Sharma said.
Climate campaigners are concerned that pushing for strong action to end fossil fuel use will be even harder at next year’s meeting, which will be hosted in Dubai, located in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
