Countries’ climate policies fall vastly short of meeting global warming goals, report finds

The News Countries' climate plans are getting marginally closer to meeting the Paris Agreement warming goals, but actual policies to achieve those plans are falling vastly short.

A report this week from the research group Climate Action Tracker found that the growth of renewable energy over the past several years has been effectively canceled out, emissions-wise, by the parallel growth of fossil fuels .

As a result, global emissions in 2030 are on track to be nearly twice as high as they would need to be to stay within 1.5°C of warming, with the gap widening over time.

The study underscores that the non-binding nature of the Paris Agreement leaves a huge loophole for countries to underdeliver on their promises — and even those go nowhere near far enough.

On the edge of Peru's coastal desert, a remote fishing town where a third of all residents have no running water is being transformed into a huge deep-water port to cash in on the inexorable rise of Chinese interest in resource-rich South America. The megaport of Chancay, a $1.3 billion project majority-owned by the Chinese shipping giant Cosco, is turning this outpost of bobbing fishing boats into an important node of the global economy. From the presidential palace in Lima, 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the port inauguration ceremony, China's President Xi Jinping watched a livestream of the ribbon-cutting alongside his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, late Thursday.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tropical Storm Sara formed in the western Caribbean Sea Thursday afternoon as it headed toward Honduras, but there is a great deal of uncertainty about what, if any, impacts the storm will have in Florida or other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast. As of Thursday afternoon, Sara was located off the coast of Honduras and was slowing down while gaining strength. It could ...