UN Climate Chief Can't Even Get An Appointment With The State Department

The UN’s climate chief has been unable to secure a meeting with the US state department as Donald Trump’s administration mulls whether to withdraw the US from the international climate effort. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is currently in the US and has sought a meeting with Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and other officials over the commitment of the new administration to global climate goals.

However, Espinosa said she had not had a response to her request and a state department official said there were no scheduled meetings to announce.

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“I don’t think it’s a good sign – it’s a snub,” said Maria Ivanova, a global governance expert at the University of Massachusetts. “Patricia Espinosa has been very gracious about this and she understands what it is like to be a foreign minister. But not responding to the executive secretary is not good manners.” During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to “cancel” the Paris climate accord and stop all American payment to UN global warming programs. His administration’s stated aim is to slash payments to countries threatened by rising seas, crop failures and heatwaves.

Following his election win, Trump said he in fact had an “open mind” about the Paris deal while Tillerson has insisted that the US should have a “seat at the table” in climate talks without specifying exactly what America’s role should be. There are elements within the administration pushing for a rapid exit from the international climate forum. Quitting the Paris deal, in which 196 nations pledged to keep the global temperature rise to below 2C, would take four years in total.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/climate-change-trump-administration-un-paris-agreement