Begin climate change action today: UN’s Ban

The outcome of the Paris agreement has no winners or losers; climate justice has won, he said. “It is an agreement where all countries are moving forward collectively in a common way, and the Obama administration has played a leadership role in getting all counties to do their fair share”.

The breadth of this accomplishment was possible, however, only because the almost 200 nations backing the agreement retained control over their own emissions targets and progress. But analysts told Utility Dive that the larger goal was to agree on a framework to allow countries to ratchet down emissions further in the future. “We are not developed but we are suffering from climate change so those who have damaged the environment – the developed world should compensate for that”.

The climate change agreement sets the goal of limiting temperature increases from pre-Industrial Revolution levels to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), with the intent to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”. Of course, politicians would have to get over their long-running love affair with the fossil fuel industry and be willing to institute economic policy that would mitigate job losses.

Obama took credit for the successful negotiations. Hopefully, its final version will include the concrete steps on how the issue of climate change will be resolved. Instead, the hope was that ambitious targets by a few countries would put “peer pressure” on others to match their pledges and over time generate, as President Obama put it, “a race to the top”-just like Microsoft’s Bill Gates decision to give away a bulk of his wealth has now inspired Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to give away his”.

“The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world”. The Paris deal is said to provide a set of diplomatic tools aimed at prodding countries into cutting emissions even deeper over time. Under the Paris agreement, countries will submit updated climate plans called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) every five years. Their presence underscored that addressing climate change is key to our future as human beings.

Other critical parts of the agreement, like emissions benchmarks and billions of dollars in climate aid from developed countries, were left out of the legally-binding section of the agreement.

Pasztor rejected suggestions that the agreement will be hard to enforce.

Zimbabwe is hailing the climate change agreement reached in Paris at the weekend as a potential turning point for the world, especially struggling developing countries that have been feeling the pain caused by changing weather patterns.

A formal signing ceremony will take place at the United Nations on Earth Day: April 22.

Describing the climate agreement as the most significant action in years to uphold the UN Charter mandate to “save succeeding generations”, Ban said nations have unanimously chose to work as one to rise to the defining challenge of current times.