Delegates from 195 countries at the UN Climate Change Conference are trying to reach a deal to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
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“President Obama has clearly supported a process to make worldwide carbon emission pledges more ambitious over time”, he said in a statement.
Trump’s comments on MSNBC came as Obama told the Paris summit that climate change is one of the greatest threats facing the USA and the world.
Almost 190 countries have submitted national climate action plans, known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDC), that they have pledged to deliver under a global climate deal.
In those same remarks, Obama said of the Republicans: “Right now, I’m going to try to stay out of the campaign season … partly because I can’t keep track of all the candidates …”
President Obama wrapped up his visit to the Paris climate talks on Tuesday by defending his decision to focus on the environment in the midst of a war in Syria and brushing off threats that his climate change efforts would be thwarted by Republicans in Washington.
Obama would have little chance of getting the Republican-run Congress to approve a fully binding new climate treaty fighting global warming.
The president responded to a question about whether a GOP president might scuttle a global climate change agreement, should diplomats strike one during their talks in Paris.
As people come to realize the costs of climate change, Obama said they will start to put a price tag on the damage it is doing. “And yet despite all that, the main message I have got is, I actually think we are going to solve this thing”, he said.
Now, Republican critics are threatening to withhold funding that the president promised to set aside to help developing nations curb emissions and brace for the impact of global warming.
“When a young student is forced to go study under a street lamp at night, it clearly demonstrates the electricity issue”, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said.
Adams, an economist, executive director of Toronto-based Probe International, who has been working with the Chinese environmental movement since the mid-Eighties, is under absolutely no illusions about China’s real position on “climate change”.
“But it’s easy to forget that rapidly developing economies are also home to the majority of the world’s very poorest people and while they have to do their fair share, it is rich countries that should still lead the way”, he said in a statement.
After protesters clashed with police earlier this week, Paris police on Tuesday extended a ban on public demonstrations around the climate conference until it is over.
Key issues, notably how to divy up the global bill to pay for a shift to renewable energy, are still contentious.
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On Tuesday, French President François Hollande announced that his country would invest 2 billion euros in renewable energy in Africa between 2016 and 2020.
