World seals historic deal in Paris to stop global warming

[2naSalit]

Last edited Sat Dec 12, 2015, 07:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: France24 via AFP

To rousing cheers and tears of relief, envoys from 195 nations approved Saturday an accord to stop global warming, offering hope that humanity can avert catastrophic climate change and usher in an energy revolution.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius ended nearly a fortnight of gruelling UN negotiations in Paris with the bang of a gavel, marking consensus among the ministers, who stood for several minutes to clap and shout their joy.

"I see the room, I see the reaction is positive, I hear no objection. The Paris climate accord is adopted," Fabius declared.

Turning to a little green hammer with which he formally gave life to the arduously-crafted pact, he quipped: "It may be a small gavel but it can do big things."

Much more at link

To rousing cheers and tears of relief, envoys from 195 nations approved Saturday an accord to stop global warming, offering hope that humanity can avert catastrophic climate change and usher in an energy revolution.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius ended nearly a fortnight of gruelling UN negotiations in Paris with the bang of a gavel, marking consensus among the ministers, who stood for several minutes to clap and shout their joy.

"I see the room, I see the reaction is positive, I hear no objection. The Paris climate accord is adopted," Fabius declared.

Turning to a little green hammer with which he formally gave life to the arduously-crafted pact, he quipped: "It may be a small gavel but it can do big things."

Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/

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Much more at link

[DCBob]

1. This is great news..

but I do wonder if anything substantial will change.

[2naSalit]

2. Indeed. I wonder the same thing.

I've been watching this whole summit on the French news, they covered it well. It appears that it is being received by those most at risk and their advocates as too little too late. I am afraid that is probably true since none of this goes into effect for five years (?). It will take that long for our Congress to transition enough deniers out to get anywhere in our country. I didn't see any Americans on the stage at the end though John Kerry and Al Gore where both there in the audience.

This may be substantial, it may still be not enough.

[DCBob]

3. Certainly a step in the right direction.

Frankly I am bit surprised they actually came away with anything of substance. Its encouraging so many countries are now more or less on board. It certainly makes the Republican deniers look foolish.

[ananda]

4. I will only say this ..

.. too little too late.

Waayy too much compromise.

[geomon666]

5. Yup n/t

[2naSalit]

12. Yup. nt

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

13. I hope they see the error of their ways

sooner than later.

[appalachiablue]

6. We need a LEAP, not steps Naomi Klein said. I think she's so right, these conferences started

in 1987 and what real action has been taken in all this time.

[swilton]

7. According to the reports from Democracy Now

this 195 nation deal didn't go far enough for the smaller island nations and it also left the US off the hook for accountability.

The last I heard about this agreement was that it went beyond/over the 2 degree Celsius limit that already is choking the planet and causing the island nations to go under water. That limit was protested as too great a risk-doing nothing at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Further, this agreement has also been criticized by the developing world and civil society for offering no accountability/enforcement mechanisms for the US who has historically (along with western Europe) has been responsible for the greatest accumulation of greenhouse gases.

imho this is nothing to celebrate.

[appalachiablue]

8. I've also followed some of DN coverage and it's as you say and very disturbing.

What the H will it take, 10 more Katrinas, Sandys and mega typhoons? Worthless govt. leaders in league with corporations. The proposal to have afflicted nations take out LOANS from banks, with interest, to deal with issues was mind blowing. Humans, bah! My heart goes out to the poor nations, peoples and island regions already suffering who've advocated so bravely for action at the COP Summit and in their own countries and communities. Scalia, Bush, Rove-- what a different world we might be seeing now if Gore, or any decent Dem. had been elected.

[2naSalit]

11. This what was brought out

on the French news often during this pat two weeks. A lot of feel good fluff but they also had a wide variety of group who had a chance to present their perspective... I found that refreshing. The general consensus among the interviewees was that 2C was past the tipping point and that even 1.5C was pushing it. And most of the opposition to anything with teeth was about the money, nevermind that it means extinction, it will harm profits temporarily.

[karynnj]

15. There were some more positive analogies that suggest that just unifying behind a goal,

making progress transparent and sharing what works could not just have countries meet their goals, but exceed them. Two examples where this happened are on the fact that lowering the levels of Sulphur dioxcide that caused acid rain happened at far less cost and faster than was anticipated when the clean air passed. The Ozone hole problem was similarly fixed faster and cheaper than expected once the Montreal Protocol was passed.

I hope that the efforts - like those with an international group of mayors involved on the issue -http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/10/247992.htm and with every country pushing to develop clean energy that the market created will make investment in this technology incredibly appealing.

[pampango]

16. I have read that the delegates knew that no "accountability/enforcement mechanism" would pass the

republican congress in the US so everything had to be structured to avoid the agreement having to get congressional approval.

They decided to adopt a voluntary "full disclosure" type of agreement that Obama the US (with Obama's approval) can be a part of rather than an agreement with "enforcement mechanisms" that will be rejected by the US (due to our partisan congress). The delegates went the former route. Perhaps that should have gone the 'enforcement mechanism' route - without the US - them brought those mechanisms to bear on the US if we violated something we had not signed.

[karynnj]

14. What Klein ignores is that it was completely impossible to get a deal that she would call a

It is a big deal that 186 countries unanimously agreed to put on record their goals and publicly share results. As John Kerry has said this sets the stage for expansion of the clean energy market. If this deal really does help developing nations get the resources and technology to sip to clean energy -- rather than expanding use of coal, this is good.

Watching - on the BBC world news or AlJazeera - on saturday, you could see that even then, it was not completely a done deal and the joy of FM Fabius when he could declare the accord passed was obvious. ( American cable stations sucked - MSNBC had coverage of pundits saying Trump was a disaster, CNN had coverage of people going to a football game!)

The fact is that Obama/Kerry/Stern et al had to develop a way to get the best agreement they could that did not need ANYTHING approved by Congress. It was innovative to start with the US/China pact, and to add other countries at the Lima summit. It was innovative to have the mayors' and governors' groups of people doing things in cities and states where they could. ( Michael Bloomberg headed the mayors' group and he made the point earlier this year that one achievement is that various cities gain from the successes and failures elsewhere - http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/10/247992.htm ) Note that many cities represented were from outside the US.

In addition, the public information on goals could be extremely important to push corporations to spend money on research and development that could lead to technology enhancements for clean energy.

The choice before the 186 countries was NOT -- between this agreement and a perfect binding treaty that would set up sanctions for countries out of line with goals specified for them or a mandatory world wide carbon tax. The former would be dead before it started -- or if the US went and approved it, it would die immediately if it was even sent to Congress for ratification. I would guess that some - maybe Naomi Klein - would be happier with that.

It would seem more productive if the Naomi Kleins and others shifted to advocating for various things that would help the US and others make - or better yet - exceed their goals.

[The2ndWheel]

9. A little green hammer

Now you know they're desperate for it to look like they've done something.

[OnlinePoker]

10. Somehow I doubt this will fly considering:

The Paris accord sets a target of limiting warming of the planet to "well below" 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with the Industrial Revolution, while aiming for an even more ambitious goal of 1.5C.

The Industrial Revolution started in the 1760's. At the time, parts of the northern hemisphere were in the grips of the little ice age which never ended until the mid-1800s. The earth has warmed 1 degree c just since 1880 so with the warming coming out of the LIA I would expect we would already be near or past the 1.5 c limit.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

[Javaman]

17. the 21st time they issued a non-binding agreement.

I will commence with the holding of the breath that they all hold to the agreement.

[olddad56]

18. because politicians are so good at solving the world's problems.

I think they are much better at creating the world's problems.