RMI Minister of Health and Human Services Bruce Bilimon joined Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Fredericksen and US Climate Envoy John Kerry at Monday’s climate event in Glasgow, Scotland where US has joined the Marshall Islands call for zero shipping emissions by 2050.
“This is an initiative RMI has been pushing through International Maritime Organization in partnership with Solomon Islands and Kiribati, led by Ambassador Albon Ishoda,” said RMI Climate Envoy Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, who is also at COP26 in Glasgow.
She noted that in a 180 degree pivot from the Trump Administration, “The US has also just rejoined the High Ambition Coalition,” a grouping of about 70 countries that are pushing the world to take greater climate action.
Billion and Jetnil-Kijiner are joined by Climate Envoy Tina Stege and a handful of other RMI officials at the climate summit that opened this past Sunday.
Stege is also chairing the High Ambition Coalition, an organization that was formed by the late RMI Climate Ambassador Tony deBrum in the lead up to the Climate Summit in Paris in 2015, and which is pushing other countries for greater climate action.
The RMI delegation is joining with many other countries in pushing for action to limit global warming to 1.5°C. “I want to come out with an agreement that keeps 1.5C (the limit on global warming) in reach,” Stege told Sky News of her hopes for COP26. “If we go past it, the future is really quite unimaginable.”