Paris Agreement took more than two decades to negotiate, seeks to limit average global warming to under two degrees Celsius
World leaders met in Paris seeking to unlock more money to drive the global economy’s shift to green energy, exactly two years after signing a global pact to avert worst-case-scenario global warming.
Two years to the day since 195 nations sealed the Paris Agreement to avert worst-case climate change, banks and companies announced billions of dollars of intended divestments from coal, oil and natural gas at a finance-themed climate summit.
But conference host France, as well as the UN and the World Bank, said efforts to shift the global economy into a green energy future were too little and too slow, as a report warned about unprecedented Arctic warming.
French President Emmanuel Macron gathered some 60 world leaders, partly in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement in June that he would pull America out of the Paris pact which had taken nearly 200 nations more than two decades to negotiate.
Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji who presided over UN climate said while the challenge is great, we must do everything in our power to meet it. We know it is the difference between life and death for millions of vulnerable people around the world
The Paris Agreement, which took more than two decades to negotiate, seeks to limit average global warming to under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Under this agreement, countries have pledged nonbinding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of oil, coal and natural gas.
On 2015 trends, total public financing would reach about $67 billion by that date, according to a report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
On other hand the US President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax”, rejecting the Paris deal and vowing to restore jobs in the fossil-fuel industry.