WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th January, 2019) The Trump administration has delivered an 'inadequate' report on climate change to the US Congress, Senator Jack Reed said in a statement.
The lawmaker's criticism came after the US Department of Defense on Friday transmitted to Congress a report focused on the impacts of climate change on its activity.
"The report ... failed to adequately answer the litany of reporting elements required by law and instead produced an alphabetical list of 79 military installations," Reed said in a statement issued later in the day. "While those 79 installations are no doubt important for mission assurance, without any prioritization for resources and installation-specific resilience plans, the report is incomplete."
The senator compared the Defense Department's report to an introductory primer or a phone book. "Whether the Trump Administration wants to admit it or not, climate change is already costing the Department significant amounts of taxpayer resources and impacting military readiness," he said.
Reed promised to take "appropriate steps" to ensure that the Department of Defense has a specific plan to respond to climate change.
The dangers of climate change became more pronounced a year ago after US President Donald Trump announced that the United States, one of the countries producing the largest amount of carbon emissions in the world, would be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Washington formally notified the United Nations of its intention to withdraw from the global deal to combat climate change on August 4, 2017. However, the country cannot officially exit the accord until November 4, 2020.
The Paris agreement, created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, went into force on November 4, 2016. It has been ratified by 184 of the 197 parties to the accord. The deal aims at keeping the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
