Paris climate talks are running out of time and are raising the question “what happens if they fail?” An agreement on which countries need to do what. Today … we are covering more than 96 percent of global emissions.
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“Of course differences remain, but it’s clear that the countries here are very, very serious about the challenge before them”, said Nat Keohane of the Environmental Defence Fund. “There is strong momentum as we head to the finish line”. For context, OPEC hasn’t reached that production level in well over three years.
With the deadline for a climate deal to be reached in Paris closing fast, business leaders from around the world have called for a long-term emissions goal.
According to veteran negotiators the indabas had made sure every country felt their views had been heard. They want to see pollution cut so rapidly that we actually may be able to avoid the most disastrous effects of climate change, including super droughts, deadlier heat waves, mass extinctions of plants and animals, mega-floods and rising seas that could wipe some island countries off the map.
Despite the emergence of numerous disagreements over the draft agreement, most observers are still optimistic over the state of the talks, and the Paris summit is being compared very favorably to 2009’s disastrous Copenhagen COP, when talks broke down in the final days and were only rescued by an unofficial agreement brokered by the largest nations.
“We didn’t come to Paris to build a ceiling”, he said.
“This is an ambition coalition”, said Giza Gaspar Martins, chair of the group of the 48 most vulnerable countries to climate change.
“This impasse has slowed progress to a crawl, with the USA lacking leverage and China and India seemingly content to wait out the process”, said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration climate adviser who is attending the talks.
Perhaps most notably, the draft agreement text set forward an undisputed temperature goal – vowing that countries will “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would significantly reduce risks and impacts of climate change”.
Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum was satisfied that the 1.5 degree target was reflected in the draft.
As part of a carefully coordinated US diplomatic push for a deal, US Secretary of State John Kerry met Thursday with Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar.
Christiana Figueres [pictured], the top United Nations climate official, said the negotiations had provided a “crystallization of political points that still need a lot of work”. Well designed climate action would reduce the global burden of disease from a variety of illnesses, including lung disease, obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, mental illness, and road injuries.
The latest version of the treaty also keeps alive a provision sought by USA negotiators that bars lawsuits to recover damages from those countries responsible for most of the world’s greenhouse gas.
Also still under contention was how to address “loss and damage” – severe and potentially irreversible climate change impacts, such as the loss of land due to sea level rise. All countries must re-examine their individual climate pledges in 2020, and then every five years after.
Separately, a group of Irish climate-change activists have been temporarily refused entry to France. In some respects, the extent to which the talks are regarded as a success or failure by those pushing for an ambitious deal will rest on the fate of the five year reviews, not to mention the United Kingdom delegation’s powers of persuasion.
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The Paris accord would rally 195 nations in a quest to roll back emissions of fossil fuels – which warm the Earth’s surface and affect its delicate climate system – and channel billions of dollars in aid to vulnerable countries.In a sign of the difficulty and complexity of the talks in Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris, carefully-crafted timetables began to slip Thursday, with the release of a planned new draft delayed twice and by a total of six hours.
