Divisions are said to be stark among different countries when it comes to a new global climate agreement.
Advertisement
The conclusion of the draft agreement marks a critical point after four years of negotiations as it demonstrates the will of all parties to reach an agreement.
“We didn’t come to Paris to make history: we came to shape the future. And young people are looking to us to provide the correct answer to that question”.
“It always seems impossible until it’s done”, French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal told the conference Saturday, quoting Nelson Mandela.
Representatives of 195 nations have adopted a blueprint to address climate change at the COP21 conference.
Many Republican lawmakers in the United States, however, are skeptical of whether global warming is real.
“The summit will show that the things that were talked here in Paris are actually happening on the ground”, Bob Orr, a Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on climate change, told reporters in Paris.
Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland said at a news conference Saturday that the group was “determined to make sure that Paris is a successful conference, and that we will see a day where we can meet the goal of reducing the damage that we’re doing to our planet”. Cory Brooker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Brian Chatz (D-Hawaii), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Many Republican lawmakers are skeptical of whether global warming is real or whether proposed remedies would work.
Another issue that has continued to dog the negotiations are differences over whether any new climate agreement from Paris should be legally binding. Many Congressional Republicans doubt global warming is real, or fear that stringent controls of carbon emissions could kill jobs. “It’s a matter of survival, and for us there is no way that we can have an agreement that does not take into consideration of the 1.5 degree issue because we’ve seen the review, which has indicated that below two degrees, it’s not a safety zone”.
“We have to further discuss… try to find some proper solution”, he said. “#ADP adopts the Draft Paris Outcome and forwards it to #COP21 for finalizing”.
The text, to be discussed by ministers next week and still containing hundreds of points of disagreement, was endorsed just in time for a midday deadline (1100 GMT) after negotiators talked through the night.
Many countries said the draft, the result of four years of work since the process was launched in Durban in 2011, left too many issues unresolved.
Rahmat called on fellow negotiators who huddled in a sprawling convention center in the northern Paris suburb of Le Bourget to stick to what their leaders had pledged in the opening speeches and not to get hung up on the details of the negotiations.
“Others in a position to do so, or words to that affect, are encouraged or invited”, said the US envoy for climate change, Todd Stern.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, several island nations along with many least-developed countries and African nations – more than 100 in all – are urging the worldwide community to move beyond previous commitments of keeping temperatures below a 2-degree Celsius rise over preindustrial levels.
