2017: Trump Peddles Climate Doubt in a World Sold on Action

President-elect Donald Trump may dismiss the Paris Agreement and pack his cabinet with climate deniers, but once he takes office, he will face a world that takes the climate crisis as seriously as he does not.

He will enter a complex web of diplomatic relations, where issues like trade, finance, migration, security, poverty, food aid and disaster relief are all intertwined and all have important links to the climate agenda. It's a world already dealing with significant climate impacts and sold on climate action.

"I am struck by the shift over the last few years in how the global community puts climate change on its agenda," Jonathan Pershing, President Obama's special envoy on climate, told InsideClimate News. "It is now virtually everywhere."

Since the signing of the Paris Agreement a year ago, addressing climate change has remained a major imperative for most of the world's nations. Enough countries quickly ratified the accord so that it entered into force early, in November. Shortly after Trump's surprising election, delegates from virtually every country in the world gathered in Marrakech to start putting the Paris treaty immediately into action.

Most countries also signed on to two other agreements this fall: one to reduce potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and another to cap emissions for the aviation industry.

Whatever the U.S. does under Trump, other countries "will move whether or not we are moving forward," Pershing predicted.

Read the rest at Inside Climate News.