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Obama Urges Global Action On ‘Growing’ Climate Threat

Obama Urges Global Action On ‘Growing’ Climate Threat

United Nations (United States) — U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged all nations including emerging economies to act against climate change, warning that time was running out to prevent further damage.

Obama, addressing a U.N. climate summit hours after ordering strikes on Syria, said that the “urgent and growing threat of climate change” would ultimately “define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other” issue.

“We know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm. We have to cut carbon pollution in our own countries to prevent the worst effects of climate change,” Obama said.

The world also has to “adapt to the impacts that unfortunately we can no longer avoid,” he said.

Obama said that he met in New York with Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of China, which has surpassed the United States as the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Obama said he “reiterated my belief that as the two largest economies and emitters in the world, we have a special responsibility to lead. It’s what big nations have to do.”

“Today I call on all countries to join us — not next year or the year after that but right now — because no nation can meet this global threat alone,” he said.

Obama has put a priority on fighting climate change but has been forced to rely on executive measures as he faces strong opposition from lawmakers friendly to the fossil fuel industry.

Telling the United Nations that “there are interests that will be resistant to action,” Obama insisted that developing nations must also fight climate change –a key criticism of his political opponents who say that the United States should not be put at an economic disadvantage.

“We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass,” he said.

Obama also said that a future climate agreement — which a 2015 conference in Paris aims to seal – needed to be both “ambitious” and “flexible.”

The Obama administration hopes to seal an agreement that does not need ratification from the U.S. Senate.

Developing countries have scoffed at taking binding action without firmer commitments from the United States, arguing that wealthy nations bear historic responsibility for climate change.

AFP Photo/Timothy A. Clary

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Obama Readies Climate Change Push At U.N. Summit

Obama Readies Climate Change Push At U.N. Summit

Washington (AFP) — President Barack Obama will seek to galvanize international support in the fight against climate change on Tuesday when he addresses the United Nations, with time running out on his hopes of leaving a lasting environmental legacy.

Obama has warned that failure to act on climate change would be a “betrayal” of future generations, but faced with a Congress reluctant to even limit greenhouse gas emissions — let alone ratify an international agreement — his options appear limited.

Tuesday’s climate summit in New York kicks off a process that will culminate in Paris at the end of 2015, where the world’s powers will hope to seal a new global climate change pact.

“Internationally, this is the opportunity for the president to leave his mark on the issue,” said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based think-tank.

Obama’s last meeting with heads of state to try to strike a climate deal, in Copenhagen five years ago, ended in bitter disappointment.

“I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen,” Obama said at the time, lamenting the failure to agree a timetable to reduce emissions over the coming decades.

– Complicated landscape –

Five years after that setback, the landscape remains complicated.

“I think that there is some greater sense of perhaps realism as well as ambition among parties than perhaps there was in 2009,” said Todd Stern, the United States top climate negotiator.

“I think, at the same time, these negotiations are always difficult,” he said in a recent conference call.

In the short term, it remains highly unlikely that the 120 heads of state and government due to attend Tuesday’s one-day meeting in New York will meet the expectations of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has called for “bold pledges” to be made.

The White House has said it will not announce its post-2020 goals in New York this week, but rather plans to roll an out ambitious target early next year according to John Podesta, Obama’s adviser on climate and energy.

“You can expect the U.S. to make public by the first quarter of 2015 a strong national target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the post-2020 time frame,” Podesta said.

“The President will use his speech at the Climate Summit to call on other leaders to keep their ambition high and to work toward a strong global framework to cut emissions.”

For the time being, the Obama administration will highlight the measures it has taken in recent months to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.

And activists may be gearing up to push harder: celebrities, political leaders and the masses rallied in New York and across the globe on Sunday demanding urgent action on climate change, with organizers saying 600,000 people hit the streets.

– Ambitious 2030 goal –

In June, Obama unveiled new standards aimed at achieving a drastic reduction in carbon emissions from all existing power plants — a 30 percent reduction of 2005 levels by 2030.

But the White House has delayed addressing the difficult debate surrounding the legal nature of the agreement that 195 nations in the U.N. Convention on Climate Change will hope to reach in Paris at the end of next year.

The U.S. Constitution states that all legally binding treaties must be ratified by two thirds of the U.S. Senate, an unthinkable prospect in the current political climate. Memories of the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated and signed in 1997 but never ratified by the United States, also loom large.

U.S. negotiator Stern said the terms of any new climate agreement “is a matter that is completely open for question and for discussion,” noting that in Durban in 2011 the countries had agreed only to negotiate a “protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force.”

“That is a very elastic phrase,” Stern said.

Obama’s climate team is reportedly working to put together a “politically binding” deal which would combine voluntary pledges with legally binding conditions from already existing treaties. Any such pact would avoid the need to seek ratification from the U.S. Senate.

“Unfortunately, this would be just another of many examples of the Obama administration’s tendency to abide by laws that it likes and to disregard laws it doesn’t like — and to ignore the elected representatives of the people when they don’t agree,” U.S. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in response to reports outlining the administration’s strategy.

Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute said any international agreement faced a “very challenging road” in the United States.

“It’s also a narrow road, because for most other countries around the world, having an agreement that is legally binding is a top priority,” she said.

“They want to know that the U.S. and other countries are going to implement their commitments. It will be one of the big challenges for president Obama to navigate that with other countries.”

AFP Photo/Timothy A. Clary

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