It’s “pretty obvious” that the world’s known fossil fuel reserves will be unburnable in a low-carbon future, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern told a forum in Washington, DC last month.
“It is going to have to be a solution that leaves a lot of fossil fuel assets in the ground,” Stern said. “We are not going to get rid of fossil fuel overnight, but we are not going to solve climate change on the basis that all the fossil fuels that are in the ground are going to have to come out. That’s pretty obvious.”
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The statement was “the clearest sign to date the administration sees no long-range future for fossil fuel,” The Guardian writes. It “will be seen as a further indication of Obama’s commitment to climate action, following an historic U.S.-Chinese deal to curb emissions earlier this month.”