COP21 Climate Change Summit Reaches Landmark Deal in Paris

US President Barack Obama called the accord “huge”, and touted US leadership in reaching the agreement. The Clean Power Plan, a measure announced by the White House in August to dramatically reduce power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions, was among the initiatives they specifically cited as examples of this strategy.

“What Paris has shown is that the world is moving only in one direction, and that is towards a low-carbon future”.

To meet the goal that was set in the Paris climate agreement, different and more efficient methods of producing energy will likely need to be adopted around the globe.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner, praised the agreement, calling it “a historic step forward in meeting one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century – the global crisis of climate change”.

Republican Jim Inhofe, a global warming skeptic who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the climate deal was “no more significant to the United States” than the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal.

In the “Paris agreement”, countries commit to keeping average global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

Director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said the agreement “heralds an exciting opportunity for business”. “This agreement represents the best chance we have to save the one planet we’ve got”, Obama said, though he did not go into the specifics of the agreement.

Most Republicans oppose Obama’s unilateral actions on climate change, and many have expressed doubts that humans are responsible for warming temperatures.

In Paris, Modi had argued that India – the world’s third biggest carbon-emitting country – needed to continue burning cheap and plentiful coal to rise out of poverty, arguing that richer nations should make deeper and faster cuts in their own emissions.

With 2015 forecast to be the hottest year on record, world leaders and scientists have warned a deal on limiting greenhouse gases is vital for capping temperatures and avoiding the consequences of a changing climate.

“It’s already happening”, Kerry said in Paris. Actual dollar amounts were kept out of the agreement itself, but wealthy nations had previously pledged to provide $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020. He said the world can be more confident this planet is going to be in better shape for the next generation.

For the first time on Saturday, 195 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) pledged to curb emissions, strengthen resilience and joined to take common climate action.