Obama Warns That Climate Change Will Create Refugees

The declaration was a boost to climate negotiators seeking a tough accord and a challenge to Republican senators, many of whom don’t believe that global warming is real.

Stavins on Tuesday was preparing to fly to Paris to speak at numerous events tied to the worldwide climate change conference – the largest gathering of world leaders in history – which began Monday.

A “slim majority” of Republicans are against an global agreement while a majority in both parties said they supported domestic policy limiting power plant emissions, a current point of contention between the Obama administration, some Republican governors and Republicans in Congress. But he says to hold each other accountable, it’s critical that “periodic reviews” of those commitments be legally binding.

It has taken 20 years of United Nations negotiations to reach this attempt at a legally binding global emissions agreement, according to conference organizers.

But Obama stressed during his press conference Tuesday that the United States wants certain elements of the agreement to be legally binding on an worldwide level, reiterating the administration’s long-standing position that the transparency mechanism for reviewing the targets should be a requirement.

Throughout the floor debate Democrats mocked Republicans who they said were “in denial” about the science and impact of climate change.

Mr. Obama is walking a tightrope, arguing to world leaders that he can politically and morally bind his successors to any deal they strike while being aware that sentiment is decidedly mixed back home.

Facing such alarming projections, the leaders of nations responsible for about 90 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have come bearing pledges to reduce their national carbon output, through different measures at different rates.

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise maintained that the President’s focus on the issue was misplaced.

“I think Mr Putin understands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory, for him to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralysing civil conflict is not the outcome that he’s looking for”, said Mr Obama, referring to the Afghan conflict of the 1980s which became a major drain on Moscow’s resources. “Treating loss and damage like an elephant in the room is threatening the EU’s alliance with countries most vulnerable to climate change”. Some also say the increasing desperation is driving people into the extremists’ ranks.

On the Syrian war he said he expected a gradual shift in Russia’s strategy as it counted the cost of keeping President Bashar al-Assad in power.

The negotiations here in the northern suburb of Paris on Tuesday entered into the complicated and often tedious business of haggling over the language that will go into a final a climate change agreement.

A similar effort failed spectacularly in the 2009 annual United Nations talks in Copenhagen.

Environmental campaigners observing the talks lamented the lack of progress and urged negotiators to step up the pace before environment and foreign ministers join the talks next week. I implore you to advance on the substance in a way that allows us to respect the strong mandate given by the diverse heads of state and government yesterday.? “They also said he should commit to stopping development of untapped fossil fuels on federal land while working toward a transition to 100 clean energy around the globe by 2050”.

As an example, he noted how the initial set of commitments that countries have made would dramatically cut projections of global temperature increases over the next century, but would still fall short of a commonly cited goal for limiting temperature growth.

One of the proposals involves saving the world s forests, which absorb carbon dioxide released by burning oil, gas and coal. “This is part of American leadership, by the way”.