India urges strong rich country moves on climate

The Paris conference is the 21st time world governments have met to seek a joint solution to climate change.

(AP PhotoMichel Euler). Representatives of NGOs display a banner in front of a reproduction of the Eiffel towerat the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget north of Paris, Friday, Dec. 4, 2015.

“I think during the negotiations and during the last few days we have been working on what is the best for our alliance of small island states, so we wanted to have the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees and we wanted to have it included in the agreement”, Ibrahim, who is also the Maldives minister of environment, said.

“Even without a fixed number and a legal shell, we are going to see an enormous amount of movement”, Kerry told a gathering on the sidelines of the climate conference in the French capital.

“The agreement must ensure sufficient, balanced adaptation and mitigation support for developing countries, especially the poorest and most vulnerable”, he said.

How to define those responsibilities is the biggest challenge in the Paris talks. Others cheered the report. They argue the West therefore is historically responsible for raising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe said Monday that the administration’s refusal to testify before his committee on President Obama’s climate change agenda is unprecedented and a sign that the president’s policy push will fail. The first one was Kyoto Protocol, which set quantitative emission cutting targets for developed countries.

“This week is critical for our climate and for each one of us”, European Union negotiator Miguel Arias Cañete told reporters on Monday.

Many Republicans question whether climate change is happening and oppose emissions limits out of concern that it would hurt USA industry and jobs.

The EU has been among the most outspoken advocates of binding targets. India has said that global stock taking is in view of a global aggregate of the commitments that nations have made. Developed countries committed in 2009 to sending $100 billion per year to developing countries to help finance their efforts to address climate change. India said the 1.5C target raised immediate issues of fairness because it would put greater limits on capacity of developing countries to grow their economies.

Fossil fuels still meet about 80 percent of the world’s energy demand, though the share of renewable energy including hydro, solar and wind power is growing, particularly in electricity generation. Donald Trump said China is “laughing at us”. The emissions are blamed by many scientists for warming the Earth’s climate, resulting in more catastrophic weather.

The high-profile participants of the COP21 in Paris stressed several times that there is an unprecedented determination to successfully end the talks.

French President Francois Hollande (2ndR) and Foreign Affairs minister Laurent Fabius (3rdR) attend … It will now be up to ministers to take the political decision as to which one they retain – or perhaps both. Even though they have already liberalized unilaterally, many of these countries now avoid making concessions at the WTO by claiming treatment as developing nations.

In an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, McCarthy said the clean power plan is “alive and well”, and adds that “it’s going to be the law of the land and it’s going to last”. Actually, a recent poll shows that two-thirds of Americans want the country to join a climate pact at the Paris talks, but never mind.

Warning that “the clock is ticking toward climate catastrophe”, Ban told ministers the world expects more from them than “half-measures”. He described meeting a young girl in the island nation of Kiribati who asked “What will become of us?”

Negotiators submitted a 48-page draft agreement Saturday that is full of competing options, leaving it to ministers to work out sticking points over what different countries will do and how much it will cost.

As we enter the second week of COP21, the worldwide climate negotiations, the mood in Paris is cautiously optimistic. “We are at this time midway on our journey to reach new climate agreement, but substance-wise we are not midway but sometimes at crossroads”.