New draft of climate deal complete, France says

AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINAMIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images US Secretary of State John Kerry (C) arrives at the COP21 Climate Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, on December 12, 2015.

Amidst cheers and applause from delegates from 195 countries, the draft of the “historic” deal was presented by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and President Francois Hollande appealed to the gathering to approve the accord.

Do have a question about the climate change negotiations or about the potential deal?

If the pact known as “the Paris agreement” is approved, countries would be committed to keeping the rise in global temperatures by the year 2100 compared with pre-industrial times “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and “endeavor to limit” them even more, to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the pact doesn’t have any mechanism to punish countries that don’t or can’t contribute toward that goal.

Fabius stayed up most of the night in negotiations, and said he is resuming meetings with “all groups” Friday afternoon. “We are nature that defends itself”.

Achieving such a reduction in emissions would involve a complete transformation of how people get energy.

After a final draft is presented, delegations are expected to spend a few hours studying it before it goes to a plenary meeting for eventual adoption.

The agreement, South African Environment Minister Edna Molewa said, “can map a turning point to a better and safer world”.

China, the world’s biggest polluter of greenhouse gases, is confident a historic universal accord will be struck on Saturday (Dec 11) to rein in climate change, senior envoy Liu Zhenmin said. “I hope so because I want to go back home”, Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s minister of environment, said on Friday. Global temperatures are already 1C above pre-industrial levels – halfway towards the 2C threshold that is seen as the gateway towards unsafe warming.

“Coming into COP21 we knew the pledges were too weak [to] limit global temperatures to no lower than 2.7 degrees”, said Dr Diarmuid Torney from DCU, an expert on climate change policy.

“It confirms our key objective, the objective which is vital, that of continuing to have a mean temperature well below two degrees and to endeavour to limit that increase to one point five degrees”, he told countries. “For that we need to have all hands on deck”, he said. “It’s a whole lot of pomp, given the circumstances”.

The draft agreement sets a goal of getting global greenhouse gas emissions to start falling “as soon as possible”; they have been generally rising since the industrial revolution.

But how the funds will be raised is unclear – and developing countries demand a commitment to increase the amount after 2020, when the pact enters into force.

Activists planned protests across Paris on Saturday to call attention to populations threatened by melting glaciers, rising seas and expanding deserts linked to climate change.

“It will need the development of a capacity for disposing of Carbon dioxide on a reasonably large scale, either captured from the air or from emissions from fossil fuels that countries or companies simply can not bring themselves to leave in the ground”, said Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford. Naidoo added, “This deal alone won’t dig us out the hole we’re in, but it makes the sides less steep”.

Xi said the world powers “must strengthen coordination with all parties” and “make joint efforts to ensure the Paris climate summit reaches an accord” according to a statement on the ministry’s website. The U.N. has been working for more than two decades to persuade governments to work together to reduce the man-made emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. The previous emissions treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, included only rich countries and the USA never signed on. The last climate summit, in Copenhagen in 2009, ended in failure when countries couldn’t agree on a binding emissions pact. United Nations climate conferences often run past their deadlines, given the complexity and sensitivity of each word in an worldwide agreement and the consequences for national economies.

The likes of India and China argue that Western industrialised nations must bear the lion’s share of responsibility for tackling climate change, while richer countries want developing nations to commit to greater emissions cuts and contribute finance to climate initiatives.

But after viewing earlier drafts, scientists warned other key wordings in the text did not outline strong enough plans for how much to cut greenhouse gases and when, which would allow global warming to continue on a risky path. It does not require them to do so.

It also aspires to a 1.5 degree goal.