Climate-fighting efforts show slight gain but still fall far short, UN says

By SETH BORENSTEIN and MELINA WALLING

All nations of the world had homework this year: submit new-and-improved plans to fight climate change. But the plans they handed in “have barely moved the needle” on reducing Earth’s future warming, a new United Nations report finds.

And a good chunk of that progress is counteracted by the United States’ withdrawal from the effort, the report adds.

The newest climate-fighting plans — mandated every five years by the 2015 Paris Agreement — shaves about three-tenths of a degree Celsius (nearly six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) off a warming future compared with the projections a year ago.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s policies, which range from rolling back environmental regulations to hindering green energy projects, will add back a tenth