World on cusp of landmark climate deal
IF APPROVED, NATIONS WILL PUSH TO HOLD GLOBAL WARMING TO BELOW 20C OVER PRE-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION LEVELS The challenge
France presented what it called a “final draft” of an unprecedented deal to slow global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the levels that nature can absorb, and urged negotiators from nearly 200 nations to approve it yesterday.
If the pact known as “the Paris agreement” is approved, countries would be committed to keeping the rise in global temperatures by the year 2100 compared with pre-industrial times “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and “endeavour to limit” them even more, to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That was a key demand of poor countries ravaged by the effects of climate change and rising sea levels.
Countries would also be committed to limiting the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100. To achieve that goal, scientists say, the world will have to stop emitting greenhouse gases altogether in the next half-century.
Negotiators had a few hours to analyse the draft before going into a plenary meeting for possible adoption. French President Francois Hollande, who joined the meeting yesterday to add weight to the negotiations, urged them to approve it.
“The decisive agreement for the planet is here and now,” Hollande said. “France calls upon you to adopt the first universal agreement on climate.”
The deal, meant to take effect in 2020, would be the first to ask all countries to join the fight against global warming, representing a sea change in the UN talks, which previously required only wealthy nations to reduce their emissions. “This is a good text,” said Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira. “Brazil can accept this.”
Some delegates, however, noted that the long-term temperature goals would not be achieved by the emissions targets more than 180 countries have set for themselves so far.
“We’ve agreed to what we ought to be doing, but no one yet has agreed to go do it,” said Dennis Clare, a negotiator for the Federated States of Micronesia. “It’s a whole lot of pomp, given the circumstances.”
The new version removes disputed concepts such as “climate neutrality” and “emissions neutrality,” which had appeared in earlier drafts but met opposition from countries including China. The document identifies climate change as ‘an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet’. It notes ‘with concern’ that countries’ existing pledges to curb greenhouse-gas emissions would fail to meet targets to curb global warming.
The goal