If adopted, the agreement would set an ambitious goal of halting average warming at no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures – and of striving for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible.
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Finance for poor countries to deal with climate change, and the different responsibilities of developed and developing countries to tackle and pay for it, were also key.
Countries would also commit to limiting the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100.
Barring any last-minute objections as negotiators pore over the final text for the next few hours, they will reconvene at around 1545 local time (1445 GMT) to approve the agreement, a major breakthrough in global efforts to avert the potentially disastrous consequences of an overheated planet.
With talks finely balanced on Saturday morning, Laurent Fabius invited French president Francois Hollande on stage to deliver a passionate call for global unity.
On Friday night, Fabius said, “all the conditions are ripe to reach a universal and ambitious agreement”.
And in the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a risky endeavour that threatens to trade economic prosperity for an uncertain if greener future. Another remaining flashpoint issue is how to compensate developing nations that will be worst hit by climate change but are least to blame for it. The developing nations are demanding “loss and damage” provisions which Washington is particularly wary of as it fears they could make U.S. companies vulnerable to legal challenges for compensation.
Activists planned protests across Paris on Saturday to call attention to populations threatened by melting glaciers, rising seas and expanding deserts linked to climate change.
“This puts the fossil fuel industry on the wrong side of history”, said Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace. Billions of people are relying on your wisdom.
Among other countries, a “high ambition coalition” including the European Union, some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries and the US, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Iceland and Norway has called for a robust climate deal, with Brazil the most recent country to join the group.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says a “final” draft of a global climate pact would be legally binding.
“The signals that have come to me give me encouragement that we are going to have a very… comprehensive and strong agreement in Paris”, Sopoaga told the AP.
And for the first time, the accord laid out a longer-term aspiration for reaching a peak in greenhouse emissions “as soon as possible” and achieving a balance between output of manmade greenhouse gases and absorption – by forests or the oceans – “by the second half of this century”.
This accord is the first time all countries are expected to pitch in – the previous emissions treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only included rich countries and the US never signed on. The last climate summit, in Copenhagen in 2009, ended in failure when countries couldn’t agree on a binding emissions pact.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon meet on the sidelines of the COP 21 United Nations conference on climate change, in Le Bourget, on the outskirts of Paris on Friday. “For that, we need all hands on deck”, he said.
LE BOURGET, France (AP) – Two sets of reality are clashing as climate talks go into overtime: Diplomatic real politics and hard science.
The slogan “DECARBONIZE” is projected on the Eiffel Tower as part of the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015.
Countries are to submit climate action plans for what they will do to curb global emissions, with a five-yearly system of reviewing and updating them with growing levels of ambition.
World negotiators have come up with a final draft of a deal on climate change which is completed and issued after two weeks of talks at high-level negotiations outside the French capital, Paris.
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If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions — remember what I just said, all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions — it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
