Extract from The Guardian
US president salutes French people for going ahead
with crucial climate talks in his address to heads of state on first
day of the conference.
Fiona
Harvey in Paris
Monday 30 November 2015 23.13 AEDT
Barack Obama has told crucial
UN climate talks in Paris that the negotiations represent an “act
of defiance” after the barbaric attacks in the city two weeks ago
in which 130 people were killed.
Offering his condolences and pledging solidarity
with the people of “this beautiful city” he said, “We have come
to Paris to show our resolve ... to protect our people, and to uphold
the enduring values that keep us strong and keep us free. We salute
the people of Paris
for insisting this crucial conference go on.”
150 heads of state and government are attending
the first day of the two-week talks, instructing their negotiating
teams on coming to a deal.
The Paris talks are seen as a last
chance for coordinated global action on climate change under the UN.
If these talks fail to produce an agreement, the world will be left
without an international effort to prevent dangerous levels of global
warming.
Current international commitments on curbing
emissions, from developed and developing countries, run out in 2020,
and the following decade will be crucial in deciding whether
dangerous climate change takes hold, as infrastructure like power
stations and transport links built in the next 15 years will still be
used for half a century to come. If it is not built to low-carbon
standards, and current emissions are not curbed, the world is in
danger of temperature rises of up to 5C – levels that would cause
dramatic changes in weather and ravage huge swathes of the globe.
Obama said that the attendance of world leaders
was a “rejection of those who would tear down our world”, and
drew parallels between the ravages of climate change and terrorism.
“[We want] a declaration that, for all the challenges we face,
climate change could define the contours of this century more
dramatically than any other.”
He warned of some of the likely effects of climate
change: “Submerged countries; abandoned cities; fields that no
longer grow; political disruptions that trigger new conflict; and
even more floods of desperate peoples seeking sanctuary in nations
not their own.”
The Paris conference could change that, he said:
“This future is one that we have the power to change – right
here, right now.”
“One of the enemies we will be fighting at this
conference is cynicism – the notion that we can’t do anything
about climate change,” he added.
Poor nations must receive particular help, he
urged. “We must reaffirm our commitment that the resources will be
there [in financial assistance for the developing world]. We must
make sure these resources [of climate finance] fall to countries that
need help … and help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after
climate related disasters.”
A cause for hope, he said, was that a sense of
urgency was growing among nations, as well as an increasing
realisation that it is within our power to tackle climate change.
Obama said the US embraced its responsibility –
as the world’s largest economy and second largest emitter – to
act, and called for unity among world leaders attending the talks. He
urged a “common purpose [for a] world that is not marked not by
conflict but by cooperation – not by human suffering but human
progress.”
“Let’s get to work,” he concluded.
However, although world leaders were anxious to
stress their solidarity with Paris and their support for the UN
negotiations, tensions were also clearly visible. Vladimir Putin of
Russia and Obama barely made eye contact on meeting, and in a private
meeting with Obama, the Indian president Narendra Modi is understood
to have made it clear he thinks developed countries should take on
substantial carbon cuts while allowing poor nations to increase their
emissions.
While pledging India to protect the planet, and
announcing new
initiatives on solar power, Modi was adamant: “Climate change
is not of our making. It is the result of global warming that came
from an industrial age powered by fossil fuel.”
Speaking shortly after Obama, China’s president
Xi Jinping
said the eyes of the world were on Paris and that, “tackling
climate change is a shared mission for all mankind.” He reiterated
the country’s pledge to peak its emissions by 2030 and said: “we
have confidence and resolve to fulfil our commitments”.
Pointedly, he also insisted that developing
countries must not be prevented from growing their economies by
having to deal with emissions and the impacts of warming: “Addressing
climate change should not deny the legitimate needs of developing
countries to reduce poverty.”
A crucial issue at the talks will be how to
provide financial
assistance to the poorest countries, to help them cut their
emissions and deal with the effects of climate change. Another will
be a long-term pledge not to let global temperatures rise beyond the
widely agreed danger threshold of 2C, beyond which scientists say
climate change will become catastrophic and irreversible. But a
number of poor nations, endorsed by the UN’s climate chief, have
made
it clear they want a lower limit, of 1.5C, to protect small
islands from swamping and the poorest nations from extreme weather.
That debate has been left open by the French presidency.
Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, urged countries
to come to a deal: ”Please, let’s meet on the middle ground, show
some flexibility and sense of compromise for the common good. We
can’t go on like this. We can’t waste any further time.”
President François Holland told the assembled
leaders and delegates at the opening ceremony that France
had put all of its energies into reaching an agreement in Paris.
“Your presence here is a sign of hope,” he told world leaders.
Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister who is
hosting the talks as COP president, said: “COP21 needs to be a
tipping point, a turning point. The Paris conference will no doubt
not resolve everything, but nothing can be resolved without it. It is
France’s responsibility to help address two of the greatest
challenges of the century: combating terrorism and fighting climate
change. Today’s generations are calling upon us to act, while
tomorrow’s generations will judge our action. We cannot hear them
yet, but in a way they are already watching us.”
David Cameron, the UK prime minister, also urged
action. He stood alongside Prince Charles for the opening ceremony,
as all of the leaders posed for a “family” photograph.
Leaders spent most of the day making speeches,
leaving their supporting teams anxious in some cases that the
timetable for private meetings – the core reason for the leaders’
presence, to iron out remaining differences and create an atmosphere
of diplomatic cooperation in which a deal can be brokered – would
be squeezed. However, many expected to work long into the night,
while negotiators carried on their meetings on a draft
text of an agreement behind closed doors.
Additional reporting by Arthur
Neslen
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