At climate-change summit, Obama issues call for action

Defy terrorism by working to preserve planet, he says

President Barack Obama speaks Monday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget, France, outside Paris.
President Barack Obama speaks Monday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget, France, outside Paris.

LE BOURGET, France -- With vows to save future generations from an overheated planet, world leaders on Monday began two weeks of talks aimed at producing a far-reaching pact to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

photo

AP

President Barack Obama has dinner Monday at the Ambroisie restaurant in Paris with several top U.S. and French officials, including (from right) French President Francois Hollande, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Segolene Royal, French minister for ecology, sustainable development and energy. Also attending was French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (third left).

photo

AP

British Prime Minister David Cameron goes over some paperwork Monday before addressing world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference outside Paris.

President Barack Obama called the talks an "act of defiance" against terrorism and proof that the world stands undeterred by Islamic State-linked attacks.

Obama used his speech to salute Paris and its people for "insisting this crucial conference go on" about two weeks after attacks that killed 130 in the French capital. He said world leaders had converged to show resolve to fight terrorism and to uphold their values at the same time.

"What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it," Obama said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed concern for future generations.

"We should ask what will we say to our grandchildren if we fail," Cameron said. "Instead of making excuses tomorrow, let's take action today."

Even before the gathering under heavy security on the outskirts of Paris, more than 180 countries had pledged to cut or curb their emissions. But scientific analyses show that much bigger reductions would be needed to limit man-made warming of the Earth to 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit over preindustrial times, the internationally agreed-upon goal.

The biggest issue facing the 151 heads of state and government at the summit is who should bear most of the burden of closing that gap: wealthy Western nations that historically have polluted the most, or developing countries such as China and India, which are now the biggest and third-biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

"Addressing climate change should not deny the legitimate needs of developing countries to reduce poverty and improve living standards," Chinese leader Xi Jinping said at the conference.

The most recent major climate agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, required only wealthier countries to cut emissions, and the U.S. never signed on. Since then, global temperatures and sea levels have continued to rise, and the planet has seen an extraordinary run of extreme weather, including severe droughts and storms.

The new round of talks seeks to produce an agreement that would require all countries, rich and poor, to take action.

While the specifics of a pact have yet to be worked out, the talks are meant to chart a path toward reduced reliance on coal, oil and gas and expanded use of renewable energy such as wind and solar power.

The negotiations will focus on whether emissions targets should be binding or voluntary and how to verify that countries are hitting their targets. Another big issue will be how to provide the money and technology that developing countries will need to reduce their emissions and cope with the effects of rising seas, intensifying heat waves and floods.

"The future of the people of the world, the future of our planet, is in your hands," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told negotiators in his opening remarks. "We cannot afford indecision, half measures or merely gradual approaches. Our goal must be a transformation."

China and India say they want any agreement to clearly reflect that industrialized nations bear the biggest responsibility for the problem.

Obama exhorted leaders to reject cynicism -- "the notion we can't do anything" about the warming of the planet.

After sketching dire threats of submerged nations, abandoned cities and ever-worsening flooding and natural disasters, Obama insisted that future "is one that we have the power to change." He urged leaders to "rise to this moment," invoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s observation that there's such a thing as being too late to a cause.

"That hour is almost upon us," Obama said.

Obama offered assurances that the U.S. isn't trying to shirk its duty.

"I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it," Obama said at the conference.

Statistics since 1959 from the U.S. Department of Energy show the United States has been by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the top man-made greenhouse gas. The U.S. has released about 258 trillion tons of carbon dioxide over the past half-century, compared with China's 158 trillion tons, the figures show.

China is catching up, though, and is now the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, accounting for 28 percent of the world's current emissions -- twice as much as the United States. Beijing has pledged to put a ceiling on its emissions around 2030 as part of the latest negotiations.

Beijing on Monday reported one of the worst spells of air pollution in years, saying levels of soot were 25 times what the World Health Organization considers safe. That's a different pollution from carbon dioxide, but both come from burning fossil fuel, especially coal.

Developing countries say they need financial support and technology to make the transition to cleaner energy. On the first day of the conference, a number of such initiatives were announced, including one backed by 19 governments and 28 leading global investors such as Bill Gates and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

Their initiative would provide billions of dollars in investments to research and develop clean energy technology, with the goal of making it cheaper and more reliable.

Separately, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande unveiled an initiative to help rich and poor countries cooperate on expanding solar power.

"It's making the dream of universal access to clean energy become more real," Modi said.

Obama said he agreed that India has the right to pursue economic development and fight poverty, but he said those priorities must also reflect "serious and ambitious action by all nations" to curb carbon pollution. Modi pledged that India will fulfill its climate responsibilities in full, declaring that "development and protection of the environment go hand in hand."

In a meeting with Xi, Obama said that on no issue had coordination with Beijing been more critical or fruitful than on climate change. He credited the U.S. and China with leading about 180 nations to make their own pledges to curb emissions in the run-up to the Paris talks.

Many of the leaders said the world must keep the average temperature within 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of current levels -- and, if possible, to half that, to spare island nations threatened by rising seas. The world has already warmed nearly 1.8 degrees since the beginning of the industrial age.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which had binding emissions targets for wealthy nations, the new deal would be based on a bottom-up approach where countries set their own targets. One of the things being negotiated is a mechanism that would encourage countries to review and improve their targets every five years.

Challenge from Senate

If a deal is reached, Obama may face a congressional test from a group of senators who would have to prove that the product of the Paris meeting is effectively a treaty.

Last month, Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.; Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced a resolution insisting that the president seek the Senate's advice and consent on "any protocol, amendment, extension or other agreement" reached at the Paris conference.

Obama doesn't plan to give the Senate the chance to reject any deal. Whatever agreement emerges from Paris, he has no intention of submitting it to the Senate for ratification. The administration argues that any agreement does not bind the United States to a course of action. Moreover, it says, the Clean Air Act and the United Nations Framework on Climate Change signed by former President George H.W. Bush already give Obama the authority he needs to carry out climate commitments.

There are disadvantages to that approach, including that a new president could back away from the Obama climate plan. A treaty would bind all future presidents to comply with it. For now, however, even without formally signing an agreement, the Obama administration is expected to abide by its own policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

In a Nov. 11 Financial Times interview, Secretary of State John Kerry said that a Paris agreement is "definitely not going to be a treaty," noting that there were "not going to be legally binding reduction targets like Kyoto."

"This is not an agreement where top-down emission targets are imposed in a binding way on countries," a senior administration official said at an October briefing, emphasizing that an agreement would reflect "bottom-up country commitments" made voluntarily.

Other administration officials said a deal would "bind" countries to a process, not an outcome. Countries would have to submit climate action plans, make those plans transparent and consult with others if targets are missed.

Plus, it would be hard to penalize countries for infractions -- there is no equivalent of an international climate police, diplomats say.

Information for this article was contributed by Karl Ritter, Sylvie Corbet, Seth Borenstein, Angela Charlton, Nancy Benac, Stacey Anderson and Josh Lederman of The Associated Press; and by Karoun Demirjian and Steven Mufson of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 12/01/2015

Upcoming Events