World leaders have come together to discuss major climate change issues and carbon emission cuts in their respective countries.
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On the eve of the COP21 conference, 184 countries covering around 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions had delivered their national climate action plans to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
At previous COP conferences, representatives of African governments seem to have had one agenda – to convince Western countries that climate change is their fault since as they were responsible for emitting – through their vast industrial exploits – the greenhouse gases that brought about the problem, and that they should therefore pay.
At Tuesday’s technical talks, countries restated their well-known negotiating positions on the question with few hints of compromise. Putin and Obama had a half-hour meeting Monday on the sidelines of the climate summit near Paris.
The French president, while poignantly recalling the terror strikes, said that “never have the stakes been so highbecause this is about the future of the planet, the future of life”, according to the New York Times.
While some are still skeptical, evidence supporting the reality of climate change is mounting. There are also many people who have voiced out on why he is a great president. Britain’s Prince Charles said: “None of us should assume that for our today they should give up tomorrow”.
While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed that the “commitment and strength” of the actions taken by developed countries “must be consistent with the carbon space they occupy”, US President Barack Obama spoke about how no nation, big or small, was immune to the problem of climate change. Marco Rubio brought his perspective: “Let me just say no matter how you feel about the issue of the environment and climate and changes to climate, there’s no way any reasonable person could conclude that the most immediate threat we face to our security is what the climate is going to look like in 25 or 30 years”.
President Obama is warning that the next person to step into his job will inherit the challenge of addressing climate change, and he says a Republican might not have as easy a time dismissing the challenge in office as GOP candidates do on the campaign trail.
By inviting Obama and other leaders to the opening days of the summit, organizers hoped to send a clear signal: Paris is not Copenhagen. In 2013, a panel of United Nations scientists said climate change could “indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks”. Peter M. Christian, president of the Pacific nation of Micronesia, called on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to declare a worldwide state of emergency.
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He says the United States spends enormous resources to prevent terrorist attacks and the country has the power to do much more to prevent regular occurrence of gun homicides. He said Obama is “struggling mightily to be relevant in a risky world, and he’s focused on the wrong climate…quite frankly, there’s more tension in the climate between the races in this country seven years after Barack Obama was elected than before”.
