I will be working with Rocky Mountain Institute to support the launch events surrounding a new America’s Pledge report. I helped work on this report for the past six months and am excited to support the panels and press events related to its launch.
America’s Pledge is a collaborative effort between Rocky Mountain Institute, World Resources Institute, and University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability that quantifies, analyzes, and showcases the climate ambition of thousands of U.S. cities, states, and businesses. These subnational actors are the U.S. coalition that is “still in” the Paris Agreement. This year’s report both communicates progress made to reduce U.S. emissions thus far and exhibits how greater reductions could be achieved by 2030 through enhanced bottom-up action and a re-engaged federal government.
Enhancing national ambition and implementing climate actions at the local scale are two themes that underly this year’s COP. America’s Pledge hopes to serve as a model for other countries looking to quantify subnational progress towards their climate goals, assure the international community that climate ambition exists in the U.S. despite federal rhetoric, and inspire the adoption of more ambitious emissions targets for COP26.