US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that certain parts of any agreement emerging from the Paris climate talks should be legally binding.
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Inhofe issued a document Tuesday that “brings to light the Obama administration’s futile and costly efforts to bind the United States to an global climate agreement”, he said.
“We need to stop using the sky as a waste dump”, Caldeira said in a news conference with MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, University of Adelaide’s Tom Wigley, and former NASA climate science chief James Hansen, who is often considered the godfather of global warming research.
Points of contention include agreeing on a systematic review of emissions-curbing pledges and ramping up climate funding for poor countries so that it reaches a promised $100 billion a year by 2020, and the legal status of the accord itself.
But speaking with reporters before his departure from Paris, Obama suggested that a GOP president might find himself or herself at odds with the wider world on the subject of carbon emissions.
In Paris, Obama said the specific emissions targets each country is setting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not have the force of treaties.
Among those in attendance at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, which run from now through December 11, are what the Huffington Post called “the leaders of the world’s worst pollution countries”.
Alex Hanafi, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the president’s comments “should not come as a surprise”, adding that there is ample precedent, dating back to George Washington, for the United States joining worldwide agreements without Senate review.
He has said more fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground if climate change is to be addressed.
The United Nations has said world leaders should pledge to cut emissions enough to keep overall world temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit), but current pledges would put the globe on track for a 3 degree (5 F) surge, according to climate scientists’ estimates.
“The politics inside the U.S.is changing”, and Republican promises on the campaign trail shouldn’t be mistaken for actual policy if they are elected, Obama said.
On Tuesday, the House passed two resolutions disapproving Obama’s rules to reduce carbon emissions from power plants despite a promised presidential veto.
Some in Congress claim that the COP21 summit, which began on Monday, is a waste of taxpayer money and will result in agreements that harm the USA economy.
Obama also met with envoys from island nations hit hard by rising seas and increasingly violent storms, which scientists attribute to climate change prompted by man-made carbon emissions. The lake, surrounded by Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, has shrunk as much as 90 percent since 1960, changing the lives of farmers, fishermen and herders.
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It is expected that the world would give audience to Beijing’s proposals, attach importance to China’s contribution, jointly making Paris climate change conference to produce ambitious and successful outcomes. Emissions targets have already been submitted by 184 countries.
