Update: December, 1st 2015
U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:
“As the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second largest (greenhouse gas) emitter ...the United States of America not only recognises our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.“
CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING:
Xi said it was crucial the climate talks addressed economic differences between nations and allowed different countries to develop their own solutions to the problem of global warming.
“It is important to respect the differences among countries, especially developing countries,” he said.
ECUADOR’S PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA:
“An environmental debt needs to be paid.” An international court for environmental justice should be set up.
“It is not understandable that we have courts to force countries to pay financial debts but we do not have a court to enforce environmental debts.“
PRINCE CHARLES OF BRITAIN:
“If the planet were a patient, we would have treated her long ago. You,ladies and gentlemen, have the power to put her on life support, and you must surely start the emergency procedures without further procrastination.“
“Humanity faces many threats but none is greater than climate change.” he said. “In damaging our climate we are becoming the architects of our own destruction. We have the knowledge, the tools and the money (to solve the crisis).“
GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL:
The aim of the summit was “a binding U.N. framework” and a binding review mechanism to close the gap between the impact on global warming of promised measures and the work required to limit rising temperatures, she said.
PARIS World leaders will launch an ambitious attempt on Monday to hold back the earth’s rising temperatures, urging each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining meant to steer the global economy away from dependence on fossil fuels.
Some 150 heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, were arriving at United Nations climate change talks in Paris armed with promises and accompanied by high expectations.
After decades of struggling negotiations marked by the failure of a previous summit in Copenhagen six years ago, some form of landmark agreement appears all but assured by mid-December.
Warnings from climate scientists, demands from activists and exhortations from religious leaders like Pope Francis, coupled with major advances in cleaner energy sources like solar power, have all added to pressure to cut the carbon emissions held responsible for warming the planet.
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 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have come bearing pledges to reduce their national carbon output, though by different rates.
For some, it has already become a pressing issue at home. As the summit opened in Paris, the capitals of the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, were blanketed in hazardous, choking smog, with regulators in Beijing asking factories to limit output and halting construction work.
Achieving what would be by far the strongest international agreement yet to commit both rich and developing nations to the fight against global warming would mean “we can have confidence that we’re doing right by future generations,” U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier this month.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, chairman of the meeting, urged delegates to work hard so that they could say “mission accomplished” by Dec. 11. “Success is not yet achieved, but it is within reach,” he told delegates.
On the eve of the summit, hundreds of thousands of people from Australia to Paraguay joined the biggest day of climate change activism in history, telling world leaders there was “No Planet B” in the fight against global warming.
“This past year has been a turning point,” Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, told delegates.
Source: Reuters
More Info:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926.php
Paris COP21 Information Hub http://newsroom.unfccc.int/cop21parisinformationhub/
Facebook: https://twitter.com/UNFCCC
Hellenic People.Org 