Climate deal could be strongest yet
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PRESIDENT Xi Jinping called for rich nations to honor their commitment to provide US$100 billion a year to developing countries to tackle climate change as he and about 150 other world leaders yesterday launched an ambitious attempt to hold back the Earth’s rising temperatures.
Xi told the UN climate summit in Paris that developed countries should accept “more shared responsibilities” for limiting global warming and helping poor countries adapt to a climate-afflicted world.
“Developed countries should honor their commitment of mobilizing US$100 billion each year from 2020 and provide stronger financial support to developing countries afterwards,” Xi said.
“It is also important that climate-friendly technologies be transferred to developing countries.”
Rich nations pledged at a UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009 to muster US$100 billion annually in financial support to poor countries starting in 2020. The money is meant to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming, as well as to adapt to rising sea levels, droughts and other potentially catastrophic impacts.
However, six years later poor nations are frustrated that rich countries have yet to fully commit to the fund.
The debate over the money highlights a long-standing feud between rich and poor nations over how to distribute responsibility for tackling climate change.
While China and the United States have pledged to work together to fight global warming, Xi made clear yesterday that poor nations should not have to sacrifice economic growth.
“Addressing climate change should not deny the legitimate needs of developing countries to reduce poverty and improve their people’s living standards,” Xi said.
“The Paris conference should reject the narrow minded mentality of a zero-sum game and call on all countries — developed countries in particular — to assume more shared responsibilities for win-win outcomes.”
Some 150 heads of state and government, including Xi and US President Barack Obama, urged each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining to steer the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels.
They arrived at the talks accompanied by high expectations and armed with promises to act. After decades of struggling negotiations and the failure of a summit in Copenhagen six years ago, some form of landmark agreement appears all but assured.
Warnings from climate scientists, demands from activists and exhortations from religious leaders such as Pope Francis have coupled with major advances in cleaner energy sources like solar power to raise pressure for cuts in carbon emissions held responsible for warming the planet.
Most scientists say failure to agree on strong measures in Paris would doom the world to ever-hotter average temperatures, bringing with them deadlier storms, more frequent droughts and rising sea levels as polar ice caps melt.
For some leaders, climate change has become a pressing issue at home. As the summit opened in Paris, the capitals of the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, were blanketed in hazardous, choking smog.
Over the next two weeks, negotiators will hammer out the strongest international climate pact yet. The deal will mark a momentous step in the often frustrating quest for global agreement, albeit one that — on its own — will not be enough to prevent the Earth’s temperatures rising past a damaging threshold.
“What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet, is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it,” said Obama, one of the first leaders to speak at the summit.
The gathering is being held in a sombre city. Security has been tightened after Islamist militant attacks killed 130 people on November 13, and French President Francois Hollande said he could not separate “the fight with terrorism from the fight against global warming.” Leaders must face both challenges, leaving their children “a world freed of terror” as well as one “protected from catastrophes.”
The leaders gathered in a vast conference center at Le Bourget airfield, near where Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St Louis aircraft in 1927 after making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, a feat that helped bring nations closer.
Whether a similar spirit of unity can be incubated in Le Bourget this time is uncertain. Signaling their determination to resolve the most intractable points, senior negotiators sat down on Sunday, a day earlier than planned, to begin thrashing out an agreement. They hope to avoid the last-minute scramble and all-nighters that marked past meetings.
The last attempt to get a global deal collapsed in chaos and acrimony in Copenhagen in 2009. It ended with Obama forcing his way into a closed meeting of China and other countries on the gathering’s last day and emerging with a modest concession to limit rising emissions until 2020 that they attempted to impose on the rest of the world.
The United States and China “have both determined that it is our responsibility to take action,” Obama said yesterday after meeting Xi.
The partnership has been a balm for the main source of tension that characterized previous talks, in which the developing world argued that countries that grew rich by industrializing on fossil fuels should pay the cost of shifting all economies to a renewable energy future.
Meanwhile, a handful of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates, have pledged to double the US$10 billion they spend on clean energy research and development.
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