World leaders launched an ambitious attempt on Monday (November 30) to hold back the earth’s rising temperatures, with French President Francois Hollande saying no international summit has ever had such high stakes.
Some 150 heads of state, including big emitters U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, will urge each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining to steer the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels.
After decades of struggling negotiations and the failure of a previous summit in Copenhagen six years ago, some form of landmark agreement appears all but assured by mid-December.
At the beginning of the conference, United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon invited the delegates to stand in silence for the 130 victims of several coordinated attacks in Paris on November 13.
The leaders gathered in a vast conference centre 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. In all, 195 countries are part of the unwieldy negotiating process, espousing a variety of leadership styles and ideologies that has made consensus elusive in the past. Key issues, notably how to divide the global bill to pay for a shift to renewable energy, are still contentious.
But Hollande said no international summit had ever had such high stakes.
“France is hosting 150 heads of state and government, thousands of delegates, coming from all continents. Never has a conference welcomed so many authorities coming from so many countries but never, and I mean never, have the stakes been so high at an international meeting because we’re talking about the future of the planet, the future of the life,” he said.
In a sombre city where security has been tightened after Islamist militant attacks killed 130 people on November 13, Hollande said he could not separate “the fight with terrorism from the fight against global warming”.
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.
Facing such alarming projections, the leaders of nations responsible for about 90 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have come bearing pledges to reduce their national carbon output, though by different rates.
“Paris must mark a decisive turning point. We need the world to know that we are headed to a low-emissions, climate resilient future, and there is no going back. The national climate plans submitted by more than 180 countries as of today cover close to 100 per cent of global emissions. This is a very good start but we need to go much faster, much further, if we are to limit the global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius,” Ban said.
Signalling their determination to resolve the most intractable points, senior negotiators sat down on Sunday (November 29), 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.
Reuters