On Monday, President Obama launched his Clean Power Plan designed to cut emissions from the power sector by 32% in 2030, against a 2005 baseline.
It's more ambitious than a draft, published for comment last year, which targeted a 30% reduction. Obama says it is the "single most important step" the US has taken to tackle climate change.
It has attracted a huge quantity of news coverage, comment and analysis. However, the final rule is 1,560 pages long, making it hard to unpick the impact of the plan from the spin. It also has international significance in advance of the impending UN climate talks in Paris.
Carbon Brief's Q&A aims to help cut through the noise, explaining the why, how and what next of the Clean Power Plan.
For the complete analysis, please visit the Carbon Brief Blog.
As December’s UN climate summit in Poland rapidly approaches, it is shaping up to be a race against time to prepare the so-called Paris rulebook, which will govern how the landmark climate agreement will actually be implemented.
Members of the European Parliament voted on Wednesday (10 October) in favour of increasing the EU’s Paris Agreement emissions pledge by 2020. They also urged the European Commission to make sure its long-term climate strategy models net-zero emissions for 2050 “at the latest”.
A new USAID report focuses on the intersection of climate exposure and state fragility worldwide. It finds that the factors that make a country vulberable to large-scale conflict are similar to those that make it vulnerable to climate change. The report thus offers a way for global audiences with an interest in climate and security to identify places of high concern.
A big difference. That was the conclusion the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came to when it assessed the differences between a 1.5°C and a 2°C warmer world in a landmark special report published in early October. The leading scientific authority on climate change found that the world is likely to pass the 1.5 °C mark between 2030 and 2052 if current emission trends are not interrupted.