Obama calls Paris climate agreement ‘huge’ on Twitter

The final draft of an worldwide climate change deal is set to be presented within hours, after countries worked through the night in Paris to secure agreement on it.

Before the deal was done, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made an impassioned entreaty to world diplomats negotiating the accord. “We don’t want that happening every couple of years and we don’t want wildfires in British Columbia that blanket up with smoke so we can’t breathe”. As world leaders were examining the text, Kerry told reporters, “We think it’s good, but we’ll see”.

The final agreement was essentially unchanged from a draft unveiled earlier in the day, including a more ambitious objective of restraining the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a mark scientists fear could be a tipping point for the climate.

The agreement, which is partly legally binding and partly voluntary, is the first to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions.

“This is a historic moment, not just for us and our world today, but for our children, our grandchildren and future generations”, Stern said. According to climate models, the national climate pledges submitted before the Paris summit will only limit warming to between 4.9 and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius), meaning further action will need to be taken.

For now, it appears parties are leaning toward mostly an honor system agreement, with individual countries making pledges that won’t necessarily be enforced by any world court or body.

“This agreement represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got”.

The accord reached in Paris is the most significant global plan ever put in place to fight climate change.

“The outcome has a bearing with the undertaking of climate change of the human being and our future of sustainable development”, China’s special representative on climate change, Xie Zhenhua said after the adoption of the Paris Agreement.

It is thought that negotiators are generally upbeat about the agreement, which will set long-term targets for curbing global warming and provide finance for poor countries to develop cleanly and cope with the impacts of rising temperatures.

Nations most vulnerable to climate change lobbied hard for wording in the Paris pact to limit warming to 1.5C. The agreement says these targets should be greater than the current ones and “reflect [the] highest possible amibition”.

The previous emissions treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only included rich countries.

“Crucially the Paris Accord has not left poor countries behind”. The agreement struck a middle ground, removing a strict firewall between rich and poor nations and saying that expectations on countries to take climate action should grow as their capabilities evolve.