LE
BOURGET, France — With the sudden bang of a gavel Saturday night,
representatives of 195 nations reached a landmark accord that will, for
the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming
greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.
The
deal, which was met with an eruption of cheers and ovations from
thousands of delegates gathered from around the world, represents a
historic breakthrough on an issue that has foiled decades of
international efforts to address climate change.
Traditionally,
such pacts have required developed economies like the United States to
take action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but they have exempted
developing countries like China and India from such obligations.
The
accord, which United Nations diplomats have been working toward for
nine years, changes that dynamic by requiring action in some form from
every country, rich or poor.
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A group of 195 nations reached a landmark climate
agreement on Saturday. Here is what it means for the planet, business,
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President
Obama, who regards tackling climate change as a central element of his
legacy, spoke of the deal in a televised address from the White House.
“This agreement sends a powerful signal that the world is fully
committed to a low-carbon future,” he said. “We’ve shown that the world
has both the will and the ability to take on this challenge.”
Scientists
and leaders said the talks here represented the world’s last, best hope
of striking a deal that would begin to avert the most devastating
effects of a warming planet.
Mr. Ban said there was “no Plan B” if the deal fell apart. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated with that phrase Friday night.
The
new deal will not, on its own, solve global warming. At best,
scientists who have analyzed it say, it will cut global greenhouse gas
emissions by about half enough as is necessary to stave off an increase
in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit. That is the point at which, scientific studies have
concluded, the world will be locked into a future of devastating
consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding,
widespread food and water shortages and more destructive storms.
But
the Paris deal could represent the moment at which, because of a shift
in global economic policy, the inexorable rise in planet-warming carbon
emissions that started during the Industrial Revolution began to level
out and eventually decline.
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Highlights from the final draft text of a climate agreement submitted to the delegates in Paris.
“The
world finally has a framework for cooperating on climate change that’s
suited to the task,” said Michael Levi, an expert on energy and climate
change policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Whether or not this
becomes a true turning point for the world, though, depends critically
on how seriously countries follow through.”
Just
five years ago, such a deal seemed politically impossible. A similar
2009 climate change summit meeting in Copenhagen collapsed in
acrimonious failure after countries could not unite around a deal.
Unlike in Copenhagen, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France said on Saturday, the stars for this assembly were aligned.
The
changes that led to the Paris accord came about through a mix of
factors, particularly major shifts in the domestic politics and
bilateral relationships of China and the United States, the world’s two
largest greenhouse gas polluters.
Since
the Copenhagen deal collapsed, scientific studies have confirmed that
the earliest impacts of climate change have started to sweep across the
planet. While scientists once warned that climate change was a problem
for future generations, recent scientific reports have concluded that it
has started to wreak havoc now, from flooding in Miami to droughts and
water shortages in China.
In
a remarkable shift from their previous standoffs over the issue, senior
officials from both the United States and China praised the Paris
accord on Saturday night.
Secretary
of State John Kerry, who has spent the past year negotiating behind the
scenes with his Chinese and Indian counterparts in order to help broker
the deal, said, “The world has come together around an agreement that
will empower us to chart a new path for our planet.”
Xie
Zhenhua, the senior Chinese climate change negotiator, said, “The
agreement is not perfect, and there are some areas in need of
improvement.” But he added, “This does not prevent us from marching
forward with this historic step.” Mr. Xie called the deal “fair and
just, comprehensive and balanced, highly ambitious, enduring and
effective.”
Negotiators
from many countries have said that a crucial moment in the path to the
Paris accord came last year in the United States, when Mr. Obama enacted
the nation’s first climate change policy — a set of stringent new
Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to slash greenhouse
gas pollution from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, in
China, the growing internal criticism over air pollution from coal-fired
power plants led President Xi Jinping to pursue domestic policies to
cut coal use.
In
November 2014 in Beijing, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi announced that they
would jointly pursue plans to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
That breakthrough announcement was seen as paving the way to the Paris
deal, in which nearly all the world’s nations have jointly announced
similar plans.
The
final language did not fully satisfy everyone. Representatives of some
developing nations expressed consternation. Poorer countries had pushed
for a legally binding provision requiring that rich countries
appropriate a minimum of at least $100 billion a year to help them
mitigate and adapt to the ravages of climate change. In the final deal,
that $100 billion figure appears only in a preamble, not in the legally
binding portion of the agreement.
“We’ve
always said that it was important that the $100 billion was anchored in
the agreement,” said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, a negotiator for the Democratic
Republic of Congo and the incoming leader of a coalition known as the
Least Developed Countries coalition. In the end, though, they let it go.
The
core of the Paris deal is a requirement that every nation take part.
Ahead of the Paris talks, governments of 186 nations put forth public
plans detailing how they would cut carbon emissions through 2025 or
2030.
Those
plans alone, once enacted, will cut emissions by half the levels
required to stave off the worst effects of global warming. The national
plans vary vastly in scope and ambition — while every country is
required to put forward a plan, there is no legal requirement dictating
how, or how much, countries should cut emissions.
Thus,
the Paris pact has built in a series of legally binding requirements
that countries ratchet up the stringency of their climate change
policies in the future. Countries will be required to reconvene every
five years, starting in 2020, with updated plans that would tighten
their emissions cuts.
Countries
will also be legally required to reconvene every five years starting in
2023 to publicly report on how they are doing in cutting emissions
compared to their plans. They will be legally required to monitor and
report on their emissions levels and reductions, using a universal
accounting system.
That
hybrid legal structure was explicitly designed in response to the
political reality in the United States. A deal that would have assigned
legal requirements for countries to cut emissions at specific levels
would need to go before the United States Senate for ratification. That
language would have been dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled
Senate, where many members question the established science of
human-caused climate change, and still more wish to thwart Mr. Obama’s
climate change agenda.
So
the individual countries’ plans are voluntary, but the legal
requirements that they publicly monitor, verify and report what they are
doing, as well as publicly put forth updated plans, are designed to
create a “name-and-shame” system of global peer pressure, in hopes that
countries will not want to be seen as international laggards.
That
system depends heavily on the views of the future world leaders who
will carry out those policies. In the United States, every Republican
candidate running for president in 2016 has publicly questioned or
denied the science of climate change, and has voiced opposition to Mr.
Obama’s climate change policies.
In
the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who has led the
charge against Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda, said, “Before his
international partners pop the champagne, they should remember that this
is an unattainable deal based on a domestic energy plan that is likely
illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, and that Congress has
already voted to reject.”
There
were few of those concerns at the makeshift negotiations center here in
this suburb north of Paris. The delegates rose to their feet in
applause to thank the French delegation, which drew on the finest
elements of the country’s longstanding traditions of diplomacy to broker
a deal that was acceptable to all sides.
France’s European partners recalled the coordinated Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris,
which killed 130 people and threatened to cast a shadow over the
negotiations. But, bound by a collective good will toward France,
countries redoubled their efforts.
“This
demonstrates the strength of the French nation and makes us Europeans
all proud of the French nation,” said Miguel Arias Cañete, the European
Union’s commissioner for energy and climate action.
Yet
amid the spirit of success that dominated the final hours of the
negotiations, Mr. Arias Cañete reminded delegates that the accord was
the beginning of the real work. “Today, we celebrate,” he said.
“Tomorrow, we have to act. This is what the world expects of us.”
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