On Saturday, Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping formally joined the Paris climate agreement in a joint event in China, giving the deal a big boost from the two top polluters. The papers certified the USA and China have taken the necessary steps to join the Paris accord that set nation-by-nation targets for cutting carbon emissions.
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President Barack Obama is expected to join Chinese leader Xi Jinping in announcing their countries are formally joining a historic global climate deal as Obama opens his final trip to Asia. Obama said the climate deal is “the moment we finally chose to save our planet”. “Our response to climate change bears on the future of our people and the wellbeing of mankind”, he said.
Countries that ratify the deal will have to wait for three years after it has gone into legal force before they can begin the process of withdrawing from it, according to the agreement signed in Paris. The ceremony occurred shortly after Obama arrived in the scenic Chinese city of Hangzhou for the annual summit of Group of 20 industrialized and emerging economies.
The climate accord was signed past year in Paris.
But there was also tension on the tarmac, with angry words exchanged when a Chinese official remonstrated with National Security Advisor Susan Rice about where she could stand.
Before China and the United States, 23 nations had ratified but they collectively accounted for just 1.08 percent of global emissions, according to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
China’s parliament ratified the Paris climate agreement earlier in the day, but no such action was necessary on the part of the US Congress.
In Paris, the countries agreed to a binding global compact for each country to decide how best to slash their own greenhouse emissions with the aim of keeping global temperature increases to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to the preindustrial revolution.
While 180 countries have now signed the agreement, 55 nations – covering at least 55 percent of global emissions – need to formally ratify the treaty to put it into legal effect.
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China represents just over 20 percent of global emissions while the United States accounting for 17.9 percent, Russian Federation 7.5 percent and India 4.1 percent. The UN weather agency said 2016 is on pace to become the warmest since record-keeping began, breaking the previous record set a year ago.
