00:00 Later today, the US Supreme Court will step into uncharted legal waters.
00:06 The court's nine judges will consider whether Donald Trump should be barred from running
00:10 for president.
00:12 It follows Trump's appeal against a decision in the state of Colorado to stop him running
00:17 there because of his role in the US Capitol riots three years ago.
00:22 Yinka Oyotade has the report.
00:25 Hopeful spectators camp outside the Supreme Court for a chance to sit in on one of the
00:30 US's biggest presidential election cases.
00:33 The nation's highest court is set to decide on whether the state of Colorado is right
00:38 to bar former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot.
00:42 This is a landmark decision and I want to be in the room where it happens to quote Hamilton.
00:48 The fate of Trump's bid to return to the White House now hangs in the balance as justices
00:52 gear up to hear arguments Thursday in an appeal made by Trump against Colorado's decision
00:57 to keep him out of the presidential primary ballot.
01:01 This for his role in the January 6th riot.
01:04 Colorado's Supreme Court says he's ineligible under the 14th amendment, which prevents those
01:08 who engage in insurrection from holding office.
01:11 Trump's lawyers say that part of the constitution was not meant to apply to the president, but
01:16 instead that it concerns so-called officers of the United States.
01:19 Trump is making this very technical argument that the president is not an officer of the
01:24 United States and therefore he, Trump, could not be subject to disqualification.
01:32 It's an argument that really would apply only to Trump because it applies to someone if
01:37 they were a senator or a district attorney or had other jobs and every president from
01:44 after George Washington on until Trump had had one of those other jobs.
01:49 Experts say Colorado's ruling is unlikely to be upheld in the Supreme Court, where three
01:54 of the nine justices were nominated by Trump when he was in office.
01:58 A decision in Colorado's favour could tempt other states to bar him from the ballot as
02:02 well - further complicating Trump's path to the White House that has already been dogged
02:06 by several legal battles.
02:11 For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius across an entire year.
02:18 That is according to the EU's climate service, Copernicus.
02:22 Scientists have called the development a warning to humanity.
02:26 To tell us a bit more, I'm very pleased to be joined live now by Vincent-Henri Perch,
02:31 who's the director of the Atmosphere Monitoring Service at Copernicus.
02:36 Welcome to you, sir.
02:37 Thanks for finding the time to talk to us.
02:39 Could you just tell us, first of all, how Copernicus reached this conclusion that the
02:46 1.5 degree centigrade threshold had been breached last year?
02:51 Yes, at Copernicus, we use observations from satellite, from non-satellite, which we combine
02:59 with models to provide a picture of the evolution of temperatures, but also a lot of other parameters
03:07 of the system.
03:08 So, we are in a good place, actually, to monitor very closely how different parameters evolve,
03:14 and particularly air temperature or sea surface temperature.
03:17 And this is the basis that we use for being able early each month to talk about the past
03:25 months.
03:26 Were you surprised when you heard that, indeed, there had been this breach or not at all?
03:31 I would say not really.
03:35 So, it's the eighth month in a row that is the highest month on the record, so January
03:43 compared to January in the past.
03:45 So, we are in a series of months that are extremely high in temperature, and it's not
03:55 a surprise.
03:56 The IPCC, already a few years ago, in a special report, indicated that there was a chance
04:02 to have high hot years, more than 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial reference, and that's
04:11 what we observe.
04:12 In January, if we look at the period from February 2023 to the end of January, we are
04:19 more than 1.5 degrees, 1.52 exactly above the pre-industrial value.
04:26 So, it's not a surprise.
04:28 We also understand the driving force behind this hot temperature, which are primarily
04:34 the emissions of greenhouse gases by human activities.
04:37 Indeed, and it is worth emphasising that this year-long breach doesn't actually break the
04:44 Paris 2015 agreement for the moment, because that would be a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius
04:51 over several years.
04:53 But how serious really is today?
04:57 Is there still time, do you think, to stop a permanent breach of that limit?
05:02 Yes, as you rightly say, it's not a breach of the objective of the Paris agreement.
05:08 It would need to be exceeded on a climatological basis, so several decades to be in breach.
05:15 At the same time, we know that the solution to this issue are unfortunately in very few
05:22 numbers.
05:23 The key thing to do is to cut down greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of CO2 and methane.
05:30 And unfortunately, the world is not yet on a trend to have zero emission, which is what
05:37 would be needed to start to stop this process and eventually to revert.
05:43 Quite the contrary, global emissions are still stable, are slightly increasing as a result
05:50 of certain parts of the world still emitting even more emissions of greenhouse gases and
05:55 other trying to cut them back.
05:58 We unfortunately, without a very strong action on cutting these emissions, there is no hope
06:05 that the situation could improve in the next decades.
06:10 Can you paint a picture for us of what this planet will look like, let's say in the next
06:17 two years, if this limit, the 1.5 limit is breached for the next two years?
06:23 So nothing dramatic would immediately happen.
06:26 I would say this limit of 1.5 degree is a limit that has been set, considering also
06:35 what we call climate tipping points.
06:37 So in principle, if we cut down emissions of greenhouse gases to zero, the situation
06:46 of the temperature increase and climate change in general could be reversed.
06:50 However, there are certain aspects in the climate system which we call tipping points.
06:55 So these relate, for instance, to ice sheets, to larger forests like the Amazon, large weather
07:03 features like the West African monsoon or big circulation in the ocean that could be
07:10 changed forever.
07:11 So the 1.5 degree is thought to be a limit above which some of these tipping points could
07:21 be exceeded.
07:23 And actually, it's really uncharted territory.
07:26 So it can seem something quite anecdotal, being 1.5, 1.6 or 1.4, but it is not, because
07:37 we don't know, the scientific community doesn't know if we would be in a situation where the
07:43 change of climate could be irreversible.
07:46 I want to thank you, sir, very much indeed for your time.
07:49 You've been listening there to Vincent-Henri Peirce.
07:51 She's the director of the Atmosphere Monitoring Service at Copernicus.
07:56 Thank you very much.
07:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]
