World ‘met the moment’ with historic climate accord

The agreement also calls for supporting the most vulnerable nations as they pursue cleaner economic growth.

“The diplomats have done their job: the Paris Agreement points the world in the right direction, and with sophistication and clarity”, said Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University in NY.

However both NDP leader Tom Mulcair and World Wildlife Fund Canada say merely approving the agreement isn’t enough.

Under the climate accord, most of the world’s countries committed to pledging to meet targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and reporting on their progress every five years using a standardized review.

“This agreement represents the best chance we’ve had to save the one planet we’ve got”, Obama said.

Obama has long sought to make combating climate change a significant part of his domestic presidential legacy but has been stymied by Congress, which hasn’t approached significant legislative action on climate change since a cap-and-trade bill failed in 2009 and 2010. The historic Paris agreement on climate change is finally adopted with no objection on Saturday by the 196 Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) hosted by France.

Head of Iran’s Department of the Environment, Masoumeh Ebtekar, held a phone conversation with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday, following the climate agreement reached that day in Paris between negotiators from 196 countries.

The legally binding pact limiting greenhouse gas emissions provides the world a road map for breaking away from fossil fuels that have powered the global economy since the Industrial Revolution.

The agreement came after two weeks of negotiations among world leaders seeking to curb rising sea levels and warming temperatures globally.

The deal – to take effect from 2020 – ends years of disagreement between rich and poor nations over how to carry out what will be a multi-trillion-dollar effort to slow down global warming and deal with its consequences already occurring around the planet.

The French president says “the 12th of December, 2015, will remain a great date for the planet”.

The text of the deal foresees a revision of national plans, aiming to cut carbon emissions, as well as creating a $100-billion support package for developing countries.

“This is the culmination of a deliberate and patient strategy to fundamentally change the global dynamic on climate change”, a senior administration official said. Only this kind of approach, with every nation sharing responsibility and taking steps to mitigate carbon pollution, can enable us to reach the goal of keeping global temperatures from exceeding 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels. “I believe this will continue because I just personally can not believe that any person who doesn’t understand the science and isn’t prepared to do for the next generation what we did here today and follow through on it can not and will not be elected president of the United States”.