US climate action plan 'completely inadequate': CSE

A day after the US submitted its climate action plan to UNFCCC, a green body in India today said the targets were "completely inadequate" and "woefully" short of ambition.
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) claimed the US target to curb greenhouse gas emissions is just a "reiteration" of its earlier pledge made in November 2014, which is "neither fair nor ambitious" and is way short of what is needed to keep global warming under two degree centigrade.
In its action plan submitted on Tuesday to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the US has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions up to 28 per cent as part of a global treaty.

This Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) - due for all countries - comes before a new universal climate change agreement which will be reached at the UN climate conference in Paris in December this year.
"The targets are completely inadequate. The world's largest historic polluter is doing the least to address climate change. The world will have to brace itself for more extreme events and calamities due to such inadequate emission cuts," CSE said in a statement.
CSE said that as per US proposed targets, GHG emissions of the US in 2025 will be 5 billion tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).

Its per capita emissions would be 14 tonne CO2e in 2025. In comparison, in 2025, India's total emissions will be about 4 billion tonne and its per capita emissions will be less than 3 tonne, it said.
"The US INDC is even less ambitious than what was pledged in Copenhagen when the US had said they would be on the pathway to a 30 per cent reduction in 2025 and a 42 per cent reduction in 2030.
"This pledge falls short of even that weak target. And this is when the world is witnessing extreme weather events and unprecedented calamities attributable to climate change," said Sunita Narain, director general, CSE.