President Obama Says Parts of Climate Deal Must be Legally Binding

“With Barack Obama’s comments we have crossed a new threshold”, said Segolene Royal, France’s environment minister.

“If we have these periodic reviews built in, what I believe will happen is that, by sending that signal to researchers and scientists and investors and entrepreneurs, and venture funds, we’ll actually start hitting these targets faster than we expected”. Republicans on the floor said they deliberately held the votes the same day as the president’s remarks at an global climate change conference in Paris to show the president faced opposition back home.

“If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide”. “I think we’re going to solve it. I think the issue is just going to be the pace and how much damage is done before we are able to fully apply the brakes”.

“Your credibility and America’s ability to influence events depends on taking seriously what other countries care about”, Obama said. “The world is looking to you”, added United Nations climate chief Christina Figueres, USA Today reported.

United Nations Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Change Janos Pasztor, like others, was optimistic about chances for a successful climate deal in an interview with The Associated Press.

Xi said his rapidly developing nation, now the world’s largest emitter, would “strive to achieve” peak emissions “as soon as possible” and echoed Obama’s call for reaching an agreement in Paris.

In a snub to President Barack Obama, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to block his push to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

A young boy looks at a giant balloon with signatures at the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, December 2, 2015, as the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) continues in Le Bourget north of the French capital.

Obama has spent months prodding other countries to make ambitious carbon-cutting pledges to the agreement, which would last long beyond the end of his presidency in early 2017. He says a deal is critical to the global economy and to USA national security.

The Obama administration opposes a legally binding deal that commits nations to specific emissions reductions because it would likely trigger a requirement that it be submitted to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it would be dead on arrival.

“Climate justice demands that the little carbon space we still have, developing countries should have enough room to grow”, said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a key player because of his country’s size and its heavy dependence on coal.

Leaders of small island nations are pleading for their survival, asking bigger countries to do more to cut emissions and help threatened nations cope with rising seas and wilder storms blamed on man-made global warming.

But Sutter goes a step further than Hollande or Obama by declaring global warming itself is terrorism. Radical jihad and global warming are different threats requiring different responses over different time periods.

McConnell raised the possibility of a Republican successor to Obama tearing up the power plant plan, claiming that the regulations “could result in the elimination of as many as a quarter of a million USA jobs” without any significant impact upon world temperatures.

The U.N. summit’s goal of limiting the Earth’s temperature to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius is also not based on science.