France Will Replace US Funding for UN Climate Science Panel, Says Macron

French president said Europe must step into the leadership role the US had abandoned, while Angela Merkel struggled with Germany’s political uncertainty.

French president Emmanuel Macron sent a pulse of excitement racing through the Bonn climate summit with a speech seizing the mantle of climate leadership from the now absent, US.

In an address to a conference charged with writing the rules of the deal struck in Paris in 2015, Macron promised to replace every cent of $2m of funding withdrawn by the US from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The president also called for a border tax to protect EU industry against parties that do not share its climate goals, and promised efforts to haul EU carbon prices up to €30 per tonne.

His speech followed a cautious address by the summit’s co-host, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, which Green MPs involved in coalition talks said cast new doubts on the prospect of a governmental pact.

Macron by contrast was bold.  On the IPCC, he said:  “We need scientific information which is constantly nourished to ensure clear decision making.  The IPCC is one of the major components of this work.”

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