Obama says world has ‘met the moment’ with climate pact

Almost 200 nations adopted the first global pact to fight climate change on Saturday, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that don’t.

Key blocs, including G77 group of developing countries, and nations such as India and China supported the proposals.

“We came together around a strong agreement the world needed”, said Obama, speaking from the White House. A few hours ago, we succeeded.

One issue that Obama did not address is the lack of binding agreement on emissions targets, that was taken out of the agreement at the request of USA negotiators.

The agreement limits temperature rise to two degrees Celsius.

A climate agreement reached at Paris climate talks has been hailed as the best chance of reaching global emission targets.

“It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way”, Obama said.

Any federal policies that result from the agreement are likely to have big implications for Texas – the nation’s No. 1 energy producer – and also to face big pushback from state leaders. He said that the joint plan to control emissions that he and China’s President Xi Jinping announced a year ago inspired other countries to make ambitious climate commitments.

A more detailed report of the Paris agreement from the President can be found here.

“No agreement is ideal, including this one”.

“These serious legal questions are of great importance to the States”, the attorneys general wrote.

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

In striking this deal, the nations of the world have shown what unity, ambition and perseverance can do.

Criticisms have been made over the fact the deal is part legally-binding and part
voluntary.

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

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change opened on November 30 in Le Bourget, on the outskirts of Paris, and was scheduled to conclude on December 11.

“Today, we can look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren, and we can finally say, tell them that we have joined hands to bequeath a more habitable world to them and to future generations”.

The ink had not yet dried on the climate change agreement signed in Paris this weekend when complaints poured in from every direction, including from environmentalists who assailed the accord backed by President Obama for being nothing but empty promises.