At the tail end of the hottest year on record, climate negotiators in Paris will aim on Saturday to seal a landmark accord that will transform the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy within decades and turn the tide on global warming.After four years of fraught UN talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperilled island states against rising economic powerhouses, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will unveil the latest text of a climate deal on Saturday at 9am (0800 GMT).He hopes to secure a sweeping agreement to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions within hours. If that fails, the talks could run into Sunday.Officials from 195 nations were locked in negotiations through the night, seeking to resolve the final sticking points, none seemingly insurmountable: the phrasing of a goal for phasing out carbon emissions later this century; the frequency of further negotiations meant to encourage even faster action.”All the conditions are in place to have a universal, ambitious final deal,” Fabius told reporters late on Friday, urging a drive to resolve what are still deep disagreements on issues such as finance for developing nations.”There has never been such a strong momentum.”The result, including pledges to expand billions of dollars in funding to ease the shift to low-carbon fuels and to help developing nations cope with impacts of climate change ranging from floods to heat waves, is likely to be hailed by many for its ambition, while vilified by others for its lack thereof.
If successful, it will be a powerful symbol to world citizens and a signal to investors — for the first time in more than two decades, the world will have a common vision for cutting back on the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for overheating the planet, and a roadmap for ending two centuries of fossil fuel dominance.By charting a common course, they hope executives and investors will be more willing to spend trillions of dollars to replace coal-fired power with solar panels and windmills.”It will be up to business, consumers, citizens and particularly investors to finish the job,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.Yet unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal agreed in 1997, the Paris pact will not be a legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the US Congress.
Instead, it will be largely up to each nation to pursue greener growth in its own way, making good on detailed pledges submitted ahead of the two-week summit.And in the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a dangerous endeavour that threatens to trade economic prosperity for an uncertain if greener future.A deal in Paris would mark a legacy-defining achievement for US President Barack Obama, who has warned not to “condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair”, and puts to rest the previous climate summit in Copenhagen six years ago, when attempts to agree even deeper carbon curbs failed.
source:Reuters
