After an 18-month stretch without a White House science adviser – the longest any modern president has gone without a science adviser – Trump appoints extreme weather expert Kelvin Droegemeier to the post. Kelvin Droegemeier is vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma and a climate change scientist. His selection was widely welcomed.
In November 2017, the U.S. government released its first ever Global Water Strategy – to our knowledge also the first of its kind globally. The opening page cites President Trump claiming that ‘[w]ater may be the most important issue we face for the next generation’. This priority may surprise observers of the current U.S. administration.
News that the Trump administration will move to repeal and replace the clean power plan (CPP) – a major initiative to cut emissions from the US electricity sector – has been met with concern overseas.
Diplomacy has an important role to play in creating an economy compatible with the target of staying below 2°C warming, agreed in Paris in 2015. At the climate conference in Marrakech (COP22) from 7 to 18 November 2016, dubbed the “implementation conference”, many new initiatives strengthened the impression that low-carbon transformation had gone mainstream.
On June 29, 2016, President Barack Obama, President Enrique Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met for the North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS) in Ottawa, Canada, and committed to improving the continent’s com