Obama ‘optimistic’ on climate change summit

“So my main focus is making sure that the United States is a leader in bringing a successful agreement home”.

Later Tuesday, Obama was meeting envoys from island nations hit hard by rising seas and increasingly violent storms, which scientists attribute to climate change prompted by man-made carbon emissions. “This is the moment we finally determine we will save our planet”, said President Barack Obama.

More than 100 world leaders gathered together Monday for a two-week long worldwide summit created to address the issue of climate change in what some are calling the last, best chance to curb greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late to reverse global warming. The far-reaching regulations form a core of Obama’s efforts to reduce overall USA greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN Conference on Climate Change officially got underway earlier today just outside of Paris, France.

The president responded to a question about whether a GOP president might scuttle a global climate change agreement, should diplomats strike one during their talks in Paris. The climate change agreement being negotiated in Paris would come into effect after 2020 when the life of Kyoto Protocol, an existing worldwide treaty on climate change, would come to an end.

Brazil and Norway declared they will extend their partnership to preserve Brazil’s rain forests; and Britain, Germany, and Norway announced an aim to provide $1 billion per year for the next five years as incentive for countries to pursue emissions-reduction goals set out by the United Nations.

President Obama compared global warming to ISIS in remarks made during a press conference in France Tuesday.

Laurent Fabius, French Foreign Minister and chair of the global conference, said: “Everything will not be solved in Paris, but nothing can be solved without Paris”.

The United Nations wants the conference called COP21 to produce a legally binding accord that ensures that the Earth’s temperature does not increase above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.

Heads of state and big-name billionaires opened the Paris climate summit with a bang on Monday, promising billions of dollars to develop new green technology to solve a key sticking point of the negotiations: financing a low-carbon future for developing nations like India.

The U.S. president highlighted India’s work on a solar alliance to deploy affordable clean energy to developing countries.