NEW YORK – With Climate Week in full swing and the United Nations convening its Sustainable Development Summit later this week, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced today that he will deliver keynote remarks at an event hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition on short-lived climate pollutants and later convene new global signatories to the Under 2 MOU climate agreement at a signing ceremony in New York on Thursday.
United Nations Environment Programme and Climate and Clean Air Coalition Panel Discussion: The Contribution of Short-lived Climate Pollutants to the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Governor Brown will deliver keynote remarks prior to a discussion moderated by Norway’s Special Envoy on Climate Change Hanne Bjurstrøm, featuring: United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner; Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment and Forests Permanent Secretary Dr. Kamal Uddin Ahmed; Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment Climate Change Department Director Dr. Adejare Adejuwon; and University of California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography Distinguished Professor Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan.
When: Thursday, September 24, 2015 at approx. 1:15 p.m. EDT (10:15 a.m. PDT)
Where: United Nations Headquarters, Conference Building Room 8, 760 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
**NOTE: A livestream will be available here and additional background on the event can be found here. For information regarding media access and credentialing, please contact Tiy Chung at Tiy.Chung@unep.org or Alejandro Laguna at laguna@un.org.
Under 2 MOU Climate Agreement Signing Ceremony
When: Thursday, September 24, 2015 at approx. 6:00 p.m. EDT (3:00 p.m. PDT)
Where: The New School, John L. Tishman Auditorium, 63 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Following the signing ceremony, Governor Brown will speak at the “Cities Driving Sustainable Development: Endorsing the Sustainable Development Goals and Committing to Their Implementation” event, which begins at approx. 7:00 p.m. EDT (4:00 p.m. PDT) at the same location. At the event, mayors from around the world will endorse the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals the day before heads of state and government convene at the United Nations to formally adopt the goals.
**NOTE: For information regarding media access and credentialing at these events, please contact Michael Shank at mshank@climatenexus.org or Emma Stieglitz at estieglitz@climatenexus.org.
As the clock ticks for national governments to reach a deal to reduce harmful emissions ahead of the conference in Paris, Governor Brown continues to focus on building and broadening collaboration amongst cities, states and provinces, at the subnational level.
The Under 2 MOU is an agreement amongst these subnational jurisdictions to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius – the warming threshold at which scientists say there will likely be catastrophic climate disruptions. Since the global agreement was first signed at a Sacramento ceremony in May, other states and provinces joined in June, July and September. With the addition of Zhenjiang in China and Los Angeles last week, the first cities to endorse the agreement, a total of 23 jurisdictions in 10 countries and five continents have signed or endorsed the Under 2 MOU, collectively representing more than $5.5 trillion in GDP and 141 million people.
In addition to action on the Under 2 MOU, the Governor traveled to the Vatican in Italy and the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto, Canada in July to call on the world’s cities, states and provinces to join California in the fight. These efforts build on other international climate change pacts with leaders from Mexico, China, North America, Japan, Israel and Peru.Governor Brown also helped convene hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists to issue a groundbreaking call to action – called the consensus statement – which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified document.
Earlier this year, Governor Brown issued an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – the most ambitious target in North America and consistent with California’s existing commitment to reduce emissions 80 percent under 1990 levels by 2050.
In his inaugural address this year, Governor Brown announced that within the next 15 years, California will increase from one-third to 50 percent the electricity derived from renewable sources; reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent; double the efficiency savings from existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner; reduce the release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon. The impacts of climate change are already being felt in California and will disproportionately impact the state’s most vulnerable populations.