About the Climate Rescue Accord

The Climate Rescue Accord started last June as a conversation on climate policy between individuals from different minor parties. The resulting Accord working group committed to:

• Pursuing what was required to stop and reverse warming with the ultimate goal of restoring a safe climate.
• Building a comprehensive suite of policy options that underpin the 3Rs.
• Reaching out to other parties, independents and environmental NGOs.

The 3Rs
The Accord working group understands that the path to stopping and reversing warming is the 3Rs:

• Reduce fast to zero emissions. 
• Remove Drawdown excess greenhouse gases to reduce concentrations.
• Repair - Active cooling - urgent R&D into immediate cooling strategies such as solar radiation management. We have left it too long for Reduce and Remove alone to prevent climate catastrophe, even at emergency speed.

The Accord’s goals are:

• Hold global average temperature rise to the minimum possible, ensuring 2°C is not breached and temperatures return below 0.5°C.
• Set a course to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to preindustrial (safe) levels, based on credible scientific evidence.

Minimum demands across the 3Rs are:

Reduce (Fast to zero emissions)

• Develop evidence-based roadmaps to near zero across all sectors for emergency implementation including energy and mining, transport, consumption and manufacturing, agriculture, land use, and construction. This includes:
  • Stop fossil fuel expansion.
  • Phase out fossil fuel use and extraction, including Scope 3 emissions and emissions resulting from fossil fuel exports.
  • Prevent and phase out sources of methane release.
    
    

Remove (Drawdown)

• Stop deforestation and land use change that releases CO2 and reduces sequestration potential and support industry change that makes large areas of land available for revegetation.
• Sequester CO2 using natural means, such as rewilding.
• Facilitate urgent R&D into industrial methods of greenhouse gas sequestration.​

Repair (Active cooling)

• Facilitate urgent R&D and international cooperation in the area of immediate cooling strategies:
  • to compensate for the loss of the aerosol masking effect as we reduce fossil fuel emissions
  • to actively cool until reduce and remove achieve a safe climate on their own.