The climate talks are taking place a heavily secured conference centre at Le Bourget on the outskirts of Paris. Will the agreement have the force of law and how will countries be punished for not meeting their commitments?
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“What we should be doing here is providing some wind at the back of not only our president, but of all the leaders of the world who are gathering to try to figure out how to deal with this challenge”, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern said on the House floor, according to CNN.
Obama says Republicans who now say they oppose an worldwide agreement to reduce carbon emissions are “playing to a narrow constituency” but would feel differently if they won the presidency and felt the pressure of leading a global community.
For the first time, the United States and China, the world’s two largest carbon producers, enter a climate change conference having made high-profile promises to substantially reduce carbon emissions. The conference, which is scheduled to run from November 30th through December 11th, has as its goal achieving a legally binding agreement meant to limit greenhouse gas emissions in order to ensure that global average temperatures do not increase in excess of two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial global temperatures.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which used targets set by U.N. for developed countries and exempted developing nations from emissions cuts, the Paris agreement expects some form of emissions reductions from all nations, but allows each country to determine what it can do.
One of the most iconic ads is that in which the American President Obama is portrayed while swimming with one of his daughters and oil burns in the background. The EU’s climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete countered that the Paris deal must be an global legally-binding agreement.
Separately, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande unveiled an initiative to get rich and poor countries to cooperate on expanding solar power. The world must emerge from Paris with a framework for abating climate change. More plant and animal species are being threatened with extinction, migratory patterns are shifting and more people being forced to leave their land are becoming climate change refugees. “This is absolutely critical if what is on the table here in Paris is to be improved, so that we can stay within the 1.5 C degree target which the most vulnerable countries have called for here”. “Science tells us we have only a few years left before the window could close on our ability to prevent severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impacts”. Those emissions produce heat-trapping gases and scientists say are causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise and leading to more and more droughts and other extreme weather.
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Developing nations want highly industrialized countries to pledge $100 billion a year from 2020 onward to help finance their switch to greener energy, arguing that these nations have emitted the most carbon dioxide and has produced the most environmental damage.
