US President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned global warming posed imminent security and economic risks, as negotiators embarked on an 11-day race to seal a UN pact aimed at taming climate change.
Speaking after attending a historic climate summit with about 150 other leaders, Obama voiced confidence humanity would make the tough decisions needed to halt rising temperatures.
However, Obama, head of the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, also issued a grim warning for the near future if the temperature curve goes unchecked.
“Before long, we are going to have to devote more and more of our economic and military resources, not to growing opportunity for our people, but to adapting to the various consequences of a changing planet,” Obama said. “This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now.”
The UN talks aim to seal a deal that would slash carbon emissions — which come mainly from burning fossil fuels — from 2020 and deliver hundreds of billions of US dollars in aid for climate-vulnerable countries.
It is the latest chapter in a 25-year-old diplomatic saga marked by spats over burden-sharing and hobbled by a negotiation system of huge complexity.
Behind their vows of support, many leaders have often preferred the short-term benefits of burning cheap and dependable fossil fuels to power prosperity, ignoring the consequences of carbon pollution.
Obama said he believed the global political landscape was shifting, boding well for Paris and beyond.
“Climate change is a massive problem, it is a generational problem. And yet, despite all that, the main message I have got is: I actually think we are going to solve this thing,” he said.
At the heavily secured summit venue in Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris, a city on edge since the Nov. 13 terror attacks that killed 130 people, bureaucrats from 195 nations began frantic negotiations.
They have until Saturday to distill a 54-page text into a global warming blueprint, before handing it over to environment and foreign ministers for a final push to seal a deal by Friday next week.
“We are really up against the clock and up against the wall,” talks cochair Daniel Reifsnyder told the negotiators on Tuesday morning.
A similar effort failed spectacularly in the 2009 annual UN talks in Copenhagen.
Many issues could derail the Paris talks, including poor nations’ demands for billions of dollars in support from rich countries to help them reduce their emissions and adapt to the consequences of global warming.
Dozens of poor nations are calling for a target of 1.5oC warming above pre-Industrial Revolution levels, while bigger polluters, such as the US and China, are backing a 2oC warming limit.
Disagreement over how to share responsibility for curbing emissions is one of the thorniest issues, and developing nations have accused richer countries of hypocrisy for demanding they cut their use of fossil fuels after carbon-burning their way to prosperity.
Nicaraguan lead negotiator Paul Oquist on Tuesday said his country would not make any pledge to cut its emissions, because that would let rich countries off the hook.
Adding to the debate, British charity Oxfam yesterday released a report saying the richest 10 percent of people produce half of the Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10 percent.
“Rich, high emitters should be held accountable for their emissions, no matter where they live,” Oxfam climate policy head Tim Gore said in a statement.
The legal status of the accord, which must get unanimous backing, is another bone of contention.
On Tuesday, US House Republicans blocked Obama’s regulations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a move he is likely to veto, but which highlights the intense domestic opposition he is facing to committing the US to any international framework.
The president on Tuesday said he supported “legally binding” commitments for some areas within a planned Paris pact, although not the voluntary action plans submitted to the UN detailing how countries are to cut their emissions.
“The process, the procedures, that ensures transparency and periodic reviews, that needs to be legally binding,” Obama said.
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