agreement

Negotiators trying to develop a strong climate agreement in Paris face significant hurdles. The goal of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 21st Conference of the Parties is to produce an international agreement that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount necessary to prevent a 2-degree Celsius rise in global average temperature in this century. The conference is likely to fail to meet this goal.

This special edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast comes to you from Paris, France where the U.N.’s COP-21 climate conference is underway. Heartland Vice President James Taylor joins Director of Communications Jim Lakely to discuss the happenings of conference so far.

The real purpose for his visit to Washington, D.C. and his address before Congress was to push for Congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the U.S., Japan and 10 other nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam). Meant to extend and widen trade and related commercial relationships between the participating countries, it is also been presented as a way for the U.S. to maintain his economic and political power in East Asia in the face of the rising influence of China in that part of the world.