Doubts about the rich-poor nation divide loom over UN climate debate

Chief of the Huli tribe in Papua New-Guinea, Mundiya Kepanga, arrives Sunday for a conference on climate, at the UNESCO headquarters, in Paris.

Island nations are keeping up the pressure on negotiators at the Paris climate talks for a strong accord against global warming.

Obama and Rousseff spoke by phone on Monday.

Earnest did not elaborate about Tuesday’s call, but says the US has played a leading role in securing emissions commitments from other nations and that the administration is optimistic about the outcome of the climate conference.

As a former United States climate representative who participated in the 1992 climate negotiations, Daniel Etsy draws a parallel between those talks and today’s COP21. “The clock is ticking toward climate catastrophe”. Poorer and developing countries have said they are less able to deal with climate change and bear less responsibility than industrialized nations that have heavily polluted for decades.

Baldwin was in Paris to host the Equator Prize awards ceremony, a U.N.-sponsored event honoring people contributing to the fight against climate change and poverty.

Boosted by the encouraging comments of US Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiators from more than 190 countries, whose mandate was to fill in the brackets on a global climate accord in just two weeks – and whose energy was beginning to wane – started to see an agreement emerging. Now I think everybody has accepted that as a fact: we are going to get an agreement, because there is enough political will, increasing political will. It makes fundamental economic sense.

Some are skeptical of the results – notably one scientist who offered a $10,000 bet that world emissions will keep rising.

Using preliminary data through October 2015, the global team of emission trackers project that worldwide emissions this year will end up 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (220 million USA tons) less than the 35.9 billion metric tons (39.6 billion US tons) they calculated for 2014.

“The discussion (on a target temperature) is like debating whether to take the escalator or the stairs when there are flames all over the house, and at the same time not getting up from the coffee table”, Knutti told The Telegraph.

“Though we have some tough issues in the next few days to resolve I am confident that we have the ability to do it”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on the sidelines of the conference at Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris. Prior to the summit, Obama offered a commitment from the USA to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2025.

From the outset, one of the biggest issues has been moving money from those rich nations that have produced most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution to developing nations that want funds to help shift their growing economies to a lower-carbon future.

European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete told journalists that developed countries now account for under 35% of global emissions.

Many U.S. lawmakers oppose a binding agreement in Paris to limit carbon emissions because they fear it would hurt U.S. industry and jobs.

The coalition, which also includes the European Union, Norway, some of the poorest countries in the world and nations including Mexico and Colombia, warned it would not accept a minimalist or bare bones agreement.

Many, if not most countries here want whatever agreement comes out of the summit to be binding on all 195 members. The money will be part of an existing promise by wealthy countries to jointly mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance.

That “should come first, because that will give us the confidence”, Prakash Javadekar said at the Paris climate talks on Monday. This will be a foundation upon which we can create further collective and innovative actions that get us to a broader solution.

He shrugged off concerns that India is being considered as a villain of the climate negotiations for insisting that rich countries take most responsibility for global warming, saying he considered it a compliment. “We need to look at the development space that is available and therefore those who are eager to maintain it below 2C should actually be working to maintain that carbon space so that they don’t compromise the needs of developing countries”. That is fatal for many farming communities and cities, small islands and delta peoples around the world.

The Paris climate talks have a new visitor: a two-story-high, mechanically operated polar bear.