World leaders have hailed the 11th-hour climate deal reached in Paris on Saturday, claiming it provides the “best chance we have” of saving the planet from catastrophic climate change. “I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world”, Obama said in an address to the nation from the White House. United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon characterized the agreement as “truly a historic moment”. He tried to rally support for an agreement with every leader he met, warning that global warming was threatening the planet.
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He called it the most significant action in years to uphold the U.N. Charter’s mandate to “save succeeding generations”. The signposts of success in the agreement was a strong objective with reference to 1.5 degrees, long-term goals that countries work toward using emission targets, finance for the poorest countries to adapt to the warming that will already occur from the carbon in the atmosphere, and transparent implementation mechanisms.
And on Saturday, Mr. Obama said the Paris agreement had been possible in large part because he had done so. “It will save lives, improve human well-being and promote more peaceful, stable societies”.
“In short, this agreement will mean less of the carbon pollution that threatens our planet and more of the jobs and economic growth driven by low-carbon investments”, Obama said.
Jeff Swartz, a Geneva-based global policy director at the worldwide Emissions Trading Association, said the deal is important because it will encourage the creation and linkage of more carbon markets, and it will allow countries to buy offsets from overseas.
The developing world, however, clearly made several compromises on climate finance and issue of differentiation between the developed and developing countries in order to strike a deal.
India’s environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, felt the deal would boost solar energy in particular and quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s famous line: “The earth, the air, the land and the water are not an inheritance from our forefathers but on loan from our children”.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal reached in 1997, the Paris pact will also not be a fully legally binding treaty, something that would nearly certainly fail to pass the US Congress.
The deal, to take effect from 2020, ends decades-long rows between rich and poor nations over how to carry out what will be a multi-trillion-dollar effort to cap global warming and deal with consequences already occurring. At best, scientists who have analyzed it say, it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half what is necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson said: ” We have an opportunity to build a new economy, and business is poised to help make it happen.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released in November suggested Republican candidates are in tune with their constituents’ wishes on the subject of climate.
“Today it is the most lovely and the most peaceful revolution that has just been accomplished – a revolution for climate change”, Hollande said.
“The problem’s not solved because of this accord”, said Obama.
France’s European partners recalled the coordinated November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people, wounded more than 300, and threatened to cast a shadow over the negotiations.
On Sunday the UK’s energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that it was an “extraordinary achievement”, but she warned it was “only the start”.
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“People in the Republican party I speak with know they’re on the wrong side of history on this issue, like with gay marriage”, said Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
