Starbucks, Gap, Nike and others demand Trump to stand by climate deal

French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday urged the United States to respect the “irreversible” Paris Agreement on climate change, and said France will lead a dialogue on the topic with President-elect Donald Trump “on behalf of the 100 countries that have ratified” the deal.

Trump’s successful bid for the USA presidency has put environmentalists and climate change scientists into a spiral.

Bill Hare, director of the Climate Analytics research group, said the U.S.in on the right path toward meeting its target “but a bit more is needed to get there”. “But the right action now will create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness”, the letter states.

But a U.S. reversal would likely also cause other major carbon emitting nations, like China or India, to at least slow their own efforts.

“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s”, Liu said.

Liu recalled that the United States played an “extremely important” role in the negotiations of the Paris Agreement, which will replace the ill-fated Kyoto Protocol in 2020 to guide global cooperation in countering climate change. We should wait watch and see the situation. “Business and government leaders must urgently work together to drive a thriving, low-carbon economy”.

Trump has pledged to withdraw from the Paris pact, and has appointed climate deniers Myron Ebell and Stephen Bannon to his team.

“If the money doesn’t come through from any given country as expected, then the others have to pick up that slack”, said Joe Thwaites of World Resources Institute, a Washington based environmental think tank. An easing of federal standards for passenger cars, which together with the rest of the transportation sector emit more carbon dioxide than any other part of the USA economy, could have vast implications for overall emissions. They will all require robust policies and significant investments in transforming our energy system, with renewable energy and energy efficiency being among the most promising solutions.

Although activists said the new plan still does not get USA emissions reductions as low as they need to be, they remained optimistic that advances in technology and falling prices for renewable energy can help fill the gap.

“What we’re creating are welding jobs, steel manufacturing jobs, in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa”, he said. But Kerry said the USA was already in the midst of a clean energy transition that would continue regardless of policy-making.

Still, some U.S. corporations have already made significant efforts to reduce their environmental footprints.

The proclamation also provided world leaders with the opportunity to reiterate some of the key planks of the Paris Agreement, including the commitment of developed nations to mobilise $100bn a year of climate finance and the importance of ramping up the ambition of countries’ national climate action plans.

Developing countries have made consistent and impassioned pleas in Marrakech for more financing to help them adjust to intensifying climate shifts – but so far those pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears, representatives said.