Senior officials from nearly 200 nations are due to meet from November 30 to December 11 in the French capital, including new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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Here’s a quick rundown what that actually means.
Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement yesterday of support for developing countries who wish to engage on climate change can be an important step forward in sharing technologies like our CCS technology, thereby creating opportunities at home. The U.S. has pledged $3 billion and Japan, Germany, France and Britain have all pledged over $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund. “We recognise that, in our different ways and in varying proportions, our countries have all been contributing to climate change”.
As for Trudeau, he will now be coming into the Paris negotiations on a wave of positive momentum, both domestically and internationally, but will still be put to task over other major issues that Canada is still considered weak on.
In his welcome address, Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat said combating terrorism and extremism should be the top most priority of Commonwealth and sought wider discussion among the member countries to deal with the challenge of climate change.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion speaks with the media ahead of the Commonwealths heads of government meeting on Thursday in Valletta, Malta.
Of course, it wasn’t just the election of the federal Liberals that caused the tectonic plates of Canada’s climate-change policy to move.
“That’s the balance that President Hollande is looking for and that’s certainly what we encourage”. If adopted by all participants in the Paris talks, the IEA says its plan can save roughly five gigatonnes (equivalent to almost a decade worth of Canada’s total emissions) by 2030. “In 2005 they were anticipating it. Now it’s a reality”.
Mr. Trudeau, who insisted his government is now working hard on climate diplomacy to push other nations to agree to an ambitious deal in Paris, said he has a case to make to India’s leader.
“We have spoken for a long time – at least 20 years, longer than 20 years – and the science has made it plainly clear”, he said at a news conference on the margins of the Commonwealth summit in Malta, on the eve of the two-week-long United Nations climate change conference, widely known as COP21, opening in Paris on Monday.
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Trudeau has invited Canada’s premiers to join him at the climate summit in Paris, and has vowed to sit down with them within 90 days of the conference to hammer out “a pan-Canadian framework” that includes emissions targets and plans for achieving them. “It is yet another example that Canada is once again a serious player in the global fight against climate change”, stated Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
