Maine Residents Carry Differing Messages to Paris Climate Talks (BDN)

Speaking at the opening ceremony, which was webcast live around the world, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said that the eyes of millions of people around the world were on the governments meeting in Paris, not just figuratively but literally.

Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., said many faith-based leaders have been writing to Congress urging action on climate change.

ReutersU.S. President Barack Obama meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) at the U.S. ambassador’s residence during the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) in Paris, France December 1, 2015.

“We need to stop using the sky as a waste dump”, Caldeira said in a news conference with MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, University of Adelaide’s Tom Wigley, and former NASA climate science chief James Hansen, who is often considered the godfather of global warming research.

Redford, trustee of the NGO Natural Resources Defence Council, told The Associated Press that the United Nations climate conference under way in Paris is “key”.

Mathur was possibly referring to the 2009 Copenhagen conference, the last time the world had taken a shot at finalising a global climate change agreement, when the draft negotiating text at the end of the first week was more than 100 pages.

The global agreement “will prevent us from further overheating the earth and causing major disruptions to people’s lives, their property and to the global economy”, Pallone said. According to the United Nations, extreme climate already impacts hundreds of millions of people every year, undermining or destroying their livelihoods, their homes and their environment.

“We have a president over there [in Paris] anxious about climate change instead of worrying about nuclear weapons coming into the middle of our cities”. “To the wildlife, to the habitat, to the ecosystems, to the water, to the ocean – that is why we have the ‘Resilience Day.’ If climate change is going to bring us natural disasters, we should have the objective of resilience as a way to face those kinds of consequences”.

“There is a requirement of success that weighs on us, we must keep it in mind during our work”, the French foreign minister stressed, noting that a “draft agreement” was to be delivered to him on Saturday.

“Developing nations understand that they also have an increasing responsibility while recognizing clearly that the developed countries have to still take the lead”, Pasztor said. Negotiators say that the French, who have put a massive diplomatic effort into the past year of preparations, are acutely aware of the risk that any agreement will be foiled not by a lack of political will to forge a deal, but by being bogged down in the unwieldy details of the text.

Nearly 290 water basin organizations are reportedly engaged under this new Pact.

In a separate poll released on Monday by the Washington Post and ABC News, 63 percent of Americans said climate change was a serious problem.