Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, on the brink of tears after presiding over almost a fortnight of talks in Paris that ran into overtime despite all-night negotiations, delivered the accord to ministers who must now decide whether or not to approve it. “The world is holding its breath and counting on all of us”, said Fabius, his voice occasionally breaking with emotion.
Advertisement
But it also includes a clause that will keep the U.S. happy – that it won’t face financial claims from vulnerable countries hit by climate change: it “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”.
But Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said climate change poses one of the greatest threats the world has ever known, and that no country acting alone can stem the tide.
The Maldives described the climate accord as an “historic agreement”.
“A landmark climate change deal was clinched in Paris on Saturday thats attempts to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius and endeavor to limit” them even more, to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
Previously, the goal on temperature rise was set at 2 degrees Celsius in 2010.
Delegates at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Paris have adopted a global pact to reduce climate change.
Carole Dieschbourg, Environment Minister for Luxembourg, holding the presidency of the Council, said: “Today is a day to be proud. China will actively assume the obligations suited to its conditions and stage of development, continue to achieve the goals of dealing with climate change before 2020, actively implement independent contributions, and reach the peak of carbon emissions”.
” The challenge now is to turn the Paris agreement’s fine words into the strong action the planet and its people need”.
USA officials also helped engineer the accord’s unusual “bottom-up” structure, which, by relying on voluntary pledges to cut emissions, spares the White House from having to seek formal approval from a hostile Congress.
For the first time on Saturday, 195 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) pledged to curb emissions, strengthen resilience and joined to take common climate action.
“Politically as well as technologically, this is no walk in the park”, said Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Institute near Berlin, and a lead author of the UN’s most rigorous assessment of climate economics, according to Bloomberg.
For the first time, all countries commit to putting forward successive and ambitious, nationally determined climate targets and reporting on their progress towards them using a rigorous, standardised process of review, the White House noted.
The agreement sets out a long-term global goal of reaching a peaking of heat-trapping gas emissions as soon as possible, and reducing them further to slash emissions effectively to zero in the second half of this century by balancing human-related emissions with the removals of greenhouse gases through forest absorption.
Those countries’ greenhouse gas emissions must represent 55% of the world’s total.
With 2015 forecast to be the hottest year on record, world leaders and scientists have warned a deal on limiting greenhouse gases is vital for capping temperatures and avoiding the consequences of a changing climate.
Advertisement
Another tender topic. Poor and developing countries wanted wealthier nations to pay to help develop new, clean energy sources that would not prevent them from growing economically.
