Global warming fight a cold front moving slowly

UN says nations' climate plans not good enough

- SETH BORENSTEIN and MELINA WALLING

ALL nations of the world had homework this year - submit new-and-improved plans to fight climate change - but the plans they handed in “have barely moved the needle” on reducing Earth's future warming, a new United Nations report finds.

And a good chunk of that progress is counteracted by the United States’ withdrawal from the effort, the report adds.

The newest plans to fight climate change, mandated every five years by the 2015 Paris Agreement, shaves about three tenths of a degree Celsius off a warming future compared with the projections a year ago.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration policies, which range from rolling back environmental regulations to hindering green energy projects, will add back a tenth of a degree of warming, yesterday's UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap report warns.