Paris Climate Treaty to Take Effect in November President Obama hails chance ‘to save the one planet we’ve got’ By Byron Tau and Amy Harder
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-lauds-historic-moment-as-paris-climate-agreement-takes-effect-1475701489
WASHINGTON—A climate treaty negotiated by more than 200 countries to cap emissions and curb the global rise in temperatures will go into force in November after the United Nations announced Wednesday the pact had reached the threshold necessary to formally take effect.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement the so-called Paris Agreement would enter into force on Nov. 4.
The agreement aims to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels through individualized national limits on greenhouse gas emissions, though the deal doesn’t itself achieve that level of emissions cuts. World leaders hope to make more aggressive cuts within the deal in the years to come through the national plans to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
The deal doesn’t legally require countries to curb emissions or take other steps on climate change—in the U.S. that would have likely required ratification by the Senate, which President Barack Obama was unlikely to get—but it does require countries to release their targets and report emissions.
Seventy-three of 197 parties to the convention have ratified, including the U.S. and China, the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters. This week, a number of European countries voted to join the pact, and the European Union voted to move forward as well. Russia, Japan and Australia are among the countries that haven’t.
Mr. Obama, whose administration helped negotiate the agreement and pressed for its ratification, said Wednesday the world had arrived at a “historic moment.
“If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet,” he said in the White House’s Rose Garden.
Mr. Obama hailed the pact as a key tool in the world’s attempts to mitigate the damage from man-made climate change.
“This gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we’ve got.”
Though major parts of Mr. Obama’s energy agenda, such as a tax on oil and a cap-and-trade system, have been stymied by Congress, the president has made climate and energy issues major priorities in his final term in office, issuing environmental regulations to circumvent congressional inaction. CONTINUE AT SITE
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