Asked to comment on China’s Five-Year Plan from 2016 to 2020, which aims at a more sustainable and balanced way of development, the secretary-general said, “China’s development transition will not only help China tackle the growing pressure from resource consumption and environment degradation, but also demonstrate to the rest of the world, and to other developing countries in particular, that it is possible to pursue a new development path that is both more sustainable and climate friendly”.
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The Kyoto Protocol is an worldwide treaty negotiated under the UNFCCC. I conclude that decarbonising national economies can mostly be done in ways that result in national economic benefits that outweigh the national costs over the medium term (even before the benefits of reduced climate change are taken into account). They are hoping that Paris will be more than a symbolic summit and that a deal will be struck.
More than 180 countries have submitted climate action plans before the conference, including pledges to cut or rein in heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions after 2020, when the new deal is supposed to take effect.
In Paris, governments are supposed to adopt a landmark deal to fight climate change and help vulnerable countries deal with rising seas, extreme weather events and other impacts of global warming.
1992: RIO DE JANEIRO – World leaders gathering for the first Earth Summit sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the first global treaty aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Some leaders have visited the sites of the deadly November 13 attacks in Paris. The agreement legally binds developed countries to emission-reduction targets.
Among the most contentious issues at the Paris summit will be the divide between rich and poor nations.
“China has become an implementer and innovator in promoting low carbon development and green growth”, he said.
Meanwhile, the Secretary-General today met with French President François Hollande to discuss the status of negotiations and identify key issues still under discussion. China, in fact, is now the world’s biggest emitter, and India isn’t far behind. Many countries have also indicated they would like to see a mechanism in the agreement that will allow them to ramp up their ambition to reach the goal of limiting a global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Formally called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, these will form the basis of the agreement expected to be reached. “You actually can not have a meaningful agreement without China and the United States being part of it”, he says.
In August 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the Clean Power Plan, an initiative to cut Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants to 28 to 29 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, president of the Paris conference, said the goal is an ambitious agreement that all countries can agree on.
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Millions of Americans are without decent jobs, and governments at all levels are strapped for adequate tax revenues to provide vital public services and honor commitments to the elderly through social security and other public pensions.
