Obama says pact is what world needs

The United States and other rich nations countered that emerging giants must also do more, arguing developing countries now account for most of current emissions and thus will be largely responsible for future warming.

Republican Jim Inhofe was vocal in his apprehensions on the climate agreement.

Representatives of 195 countries reached the landmark climate accord on Saturday following two weeks of intense negotiations in a Paris suburb that will commit both rich and poor nations to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to arrest global warming.

In Washington, President Barack Obama lauded the “historic” pact, saying it “represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got”.

Pledges to limit carbon from 187 nations aren’t yet enough to hold to a 2-degree pathway, let alone 1.5 degrees. according to researchers at the Climate Action Tracker, a group of four European institutions, who estimate the measures will cap the rise at 2.7 degrees.

As the costs of low carbon technologies come down, countries will be able to step up their targets on reducing emissions.

And it also says they will strive to curb increases even more, to 1.5C.

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama had already stated that Fiji would cut its emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said: “We have entered a new era of global cooperation on one of the most complex issues ever to confront humanity”. Absent clear legal language to guarantee compliance, it’s too soon to tell if COP21 be any more effective than previous climate agreements which fell flat over performance monitoring and enforcement.

United Nations climate talks reached a milestone Saturday when more than 190 countries adopted the first accord asking all countries to join the fight against global warming.

On the basis of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, developed countries agreed to raise 100 billion US dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries transform their economies.

“There is nothing historic about this deal”, said American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Communities need to continue organizing and holding their elected officials accountable so that they ultimately deliver the solutions we all need”, said Wenonah Hauter. Fabius said the compromise “affirms our objective … to have a temperature [increase] well below 2 degrees [Celsius]”, as well as “to endeavor to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees, which should make it possible to reduce the risks and impacts linked to climate change”.

“It means that in the end, you have to phase out carbon dioxide, ” said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

CSE analyses that India will be under constant pressure to take more burden for mitigating climate change by 2020 and beyond, especially when the next review of all the nationally determined contributions of countries take place.