Obama: Climate change deal the ‘best chance’ to save planet

It is the first pact to ask all countries to join the fight against global warming, representing a sea change in U.N. talks that previously required only wealthy nations to reduce their emissions.

“That single number, and the new goal of net zero emissions by the second half of this century, will cause consternation in the boardrooms of coal companies and the palaces of oil-exporting states”, said Greenpeace International chief Kumi Naidoo.

The key element of the deal is to keep global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and an “endeavour to limit” them even more to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Nevertheless the deal has backing from 195 countries, nearly 190 of whom have submitted plans for the action they will take against climate change – with Venezuela bringing the total to 188 when it submitted its pledge on Saturday night after the deal was struck.

The “Paris Agreement” is the world’s first comprehensive climate accord, the core of which is legally binding and which commits all countries to take action to address global warming.

“To help developing countries switch from fossil fuels to greener sources of energy and adapt to the effects of climate change, the developed world will provide $100 billion a year”, NPR’s Chris Joyce, who has been covering the climate conference, reports.

“Our head is above water”, said Olai Uludong, ambassador on climate change for the Pacific island state of Palau.

AFTER two weeks of negotiations, a climate change agreement was finally reached in Paris on Saturday afternoon (early Sunday morning Fiji time). “This puts the fossil fuel industry on the wrong side of history”, said Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace.

Obama has not been able to have much legislative success in Congress to deal with “climate change”, and Republicans have opposed his unilateral actions. “This deal alone won’t dig us out of the hole we’re in”. Among the many goals is that of limiting the world’s rise in average temperature to “well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius”. In Paris, governments agreed on ambition, commitment, and solidarity. Almost 6 in 10 Republicans surveyed said global warming was not a serious problem.

Under the headline “Climate Accord is a Healing Step, if Not a Cure”, it notes that if the signatories stick to the letter, they can “achieve far larger cuts in emissions than any previous climate accord”.

Brown spent five days at the conference in Paris, during which time he met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, China’s Special Envoy on Climate Change Xie Zhenhua and U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “We must protect the planet that sustains us”, Ban told the negotiators.

The “balance” acknowledges that we could still have some greenhouse gas emissions in the future but these emissions would need to be offset by the removal of an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

The talks were initially scheduled to end Friday but ran over as Western powers, tiny Pacific island nations and everyone in between haggled over wording. To reflect this, in 2020, countries will be expected to update their plans to cut emissions by 2030.

However, There was a contrary view too to the deal with the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the climate change agreement is “weak and unambitious” as it does not include any “meaningful” targets and has discharged developed nations from their historical responsibility.