Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham joined four other Democrat and Republican governors attending COP-26 in setting goals for moving toward net zero carbon emissions next year.
She was among the sub-national leaders at COP-26 in the “U.S. Climate Alliance†who have vowed to “keep 1.5 alive†amid growing concerns that governments everywhere are failing to do what’s needed to slow the relentless increase in global worming.
Lujan Grisham met with Governors Jay Inslee of Washington State, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, David Ige of Hawaii and Kate Brown of Oregon to “demonstrate a critical mass of high ambition states†intent on moving just as relentlessly toward keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Centigrade compared to the pre-Industrial Era climate.
Together, the five states represent 55 percent of the U.S. population and 60 percent of the U.S. economy as expressed in gross domestic product (GDP). They said they are committed to achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.
But the name of their nascent club, the “Under 2 Coalition,†seems a little less ambitious. A two degree Celsius average increase would engulf the world in devastations to crops, wildlife and scarcely habitable human living conditions.
On the governors’ Sunday, November 7 schedule was a “Net Zero Futures Initiative†that would “set the 2030 agenda for transformative climate action… starting with objectives for action in 2022.â€