Call for climate solidarity in face of Trump threats

Countries at high risk of sea-level rise, drought and storms caused by global warming urged world leaders today to stay the course despite America's threatened exit from a UN climate pact.
The Paris Agreement struck in 2015 to limit warming by capping emissions from burning coal, oil and gas, is "our lifeline", pleaded the Climate Vulnerable Forum.
The grouping represents the interests at UN climate negotiations of over a billion people in nearly 50 countries on five continents.
"As long there is a chance to stop global warming at a level that lets humanity survive and thrive, we should seize it," CVF representative Emmanuel De Guzman, a climate commissioner from the Philippines, said on the sidelines of UN talks under way in Bonn.

"This is why we continue to advance the call for world leaders to keep to the 1.5 goal and to recalibrate climate finance" for poorer countries to build less polluting infrastructure and raise their defences against climate impacts.
The Paris Agreement set a limit of two degrees Celsius limit for average global warming over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

Also underwritten is an aspirational lower target of 1.5 C, which the CVF considers says is key to the survival of millions of its people.
Trump has yet to announce whether or not he intends to execute his threats to withdraw America from the pact which his predecessor, Barack Obama, was instrumental in pushing through.

"We really believe that right now without increased climate action no country can ever be great again," said De Guzman, referring to Trump's campaign slogan: "Make America great again.