Nearly 200 nations near historic deal to slow global warming

[liberalnarb]

[div class="excerpt"LE BOURGET, France (AP) -- France crafted an unprecedented deal to slow global warming by cutting and then eliminating greenhouse gas pollution, urging climate negotiators from nearly 200 nations to adopt it Saturday.

In the "Paris agreement," countries would commit to keeping average global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects of climate change. But the pact doesn't have any mechanism to punish countries that don't or can't contribute toward that goal.

Countries would also commit 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.

In practical terms, achieving that goal means the world would have to stop emitting greenhouse gases altogether in the next half-century, scientists said. That's because the less we pollute, the less pollution nature absorbs

Full Article HERE

[pampango]

1. WaPo: Paris accord is a big win for Obama, even as climate dangers still loom

On this unseasonably mild December Saturday in Washington, President Obama had reason to bask in the sun.

Across the Atlantic, international climate negotiators completed an agreement that owed much of its success to the willingness of the U.S. president to take on both congressional Republicans and fossil-fuel-industry executives on an issue that consistently ranks among the lowest priorities for American voters.

Though the international agreement reached in Paris on Saturday still leaves the world perilously vulnerable to global warming and rising seas, Obama has significantly advanced the global climate agenda and has established a mechanism that would enable countries to exploit new technology and, if possible, tighten their existing pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As negotiators huddled in Paris this past week, Obama was still weighing in by phone with the leaders of France, Brazil, China and India.

For Obama, the Paris agreement fulfills a personal as well as political goal, one that was delayed at the beginning of his administration because of the acute economic crisis and the political capital he devoted to overhauling the health-insurance system. By the end of 2009, a cap-and-trade bill passed by the House had failed in the Senate, and the international Copenhagen climate summit had ended in turmoil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/paris-accord-is-a-big-win-for-obama-even-as-climate-dangers-still-loom/2015/12/12/bd6c5758-a044-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html