Recognizing this possibility, a concerned President Barack Obama said part of the climate agreement soon to be hammered next week should be legally binding.
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“One of the things that you find is when you’re in this job, you think about it differently than when you’re just running for the job”, Obama told reporters at a climate change summit in Paris.
For veterans of these kinds of gatherings, this optimism at COP21, the global climate change conference just outside Paris, couldn’t be less familiar.
Obama says he wants to see a climate deal that allows countries update their carbon-reduction targets regularly and enables developing nations to use new technology to “skip the dirty phase of development”.
Cass said any agreement in Paris would not only lead to Americans paying more for energy but also would lead to taxpayers sending billions overseas to poorer nations that may not take any actions to prevent climate change.
This vocal group, which goes under the name of Association of Small Island States, or AOSIS, has been demanding stricter climate action from the rest of the world and insisting that countries must try to keep the rise in global average temperatures within 1.5 degree of pre-industrial times and not 2 degree which most other countries agree on.
The Hawaiian-born Obama referred to himself as “an island boy”, saying he understands the beauty and fragility of island life.
Despite this, Obama said he believed the global political landscape was shifting, boding well for Paris and beyond. Still, a majority – 62 percent – think the USA should reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do, Yale Project pollsters noted.
Obama said the United States would help other countries meet their energy goals. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie thinks Obama puts too high a priority on fighting global warming, arguing on NBC on Tuesday that the president should focus more on “the climate right now between people and their government.” Sen.
While the Paris agreement won’t “solve” climate change, it can be a critical inflection point.
So one key component of the negotiations is to come up with a mechanism that will ensure that countries strengthen their commitments over time.
But she said the biggest gap was over climate finance. French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday heard from 12 African leaders who described the Sahara Desert encroaching on farmland, forests disappearing from Congo to Madagascar and rising sea levels swallowing homes in West African river deltas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he and President Obama have a shared understanding on how to move toward a political settlement in Syria, but added that incidents like the recent downing of a Russian warplane by a Turkish fighter jet stymie broader cooperation against extremism. But inscribing the emissions target in the Paris deal would probably require the president to submit the pact to the GOP-controlled Congress, where it would be unlikely to win ratification.
Hollande said, “The world, and in particular the developed world, owes the African continent an environmental debt”.
At the heavily secured summit venue in Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris, a city on edge since the November 13 terror attacks that killed 130 people, bureaucrats from 195 nations began a frantic effort to distill a 54-page text into a global warming blueprint. The leaders agreed that something must be done to protect the planet for future generations, but now must overcome disagreements over who should shoulder the economic responsibility for cutting emissions and protecting countries already hit by climate change.
The proposal is likely to face opposition from some leading emerging economies, who fear a formal review system could see them face increased pressure to curb their emissions.
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So have the provincial initiatives to cut carbon emissions, and Canada’s $2.65-billion contribution to help developing countries design their own national plans to cut emissions. Envoys are urging greater efforts against illegal logging.
