Climate talks

Obama casts climate talks as world's last best chance

'There is such a thing as being too late,' the president warns, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

President Barack Obama urged the world to consider the climate talks that kicked off here Monday as potentially the last chance to make a meaningful impact on combating climate change.

What the world needs to agree on, Obama told the 150-odd other world leaders gathered in Paris for the two-week conference, is “not a stopgap solution, but a long-term strategy that gives the world confidence in a low-carbon future.”

Obama quoted Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “There is such a thing as being too late.”

“When it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, now, if we place our short-term interests behind the air that our children will breathe and the water our children will drink,” Obama said, “then we will not be too late for them.”

Obama noted the backdrop of the Nov. 13 terror attacks, casting a climate agreement as a rebuke to the terrorists, much as he did in speaking at his news conference with French President François Hollande at the White House last week.

"We salute the people of Paris for insisting this crucial conference go on," Obama said, calling it "an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children."

"Through our presence here today, we show that we are stronger than the terrorists," German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed in her own remarks.

The summit, housed in a conference center in the suburbs of the French capital, will be seeking a collective, nonbinding agreement among nations setting their own plans to cut carbon emissions, largely through switching to renewable energy production over fossil fuels. The burden falls differently on countries at various stages of development: The United States and China, the two largest carbon emitters, are pledging to cut their own production and increase clean-up efforts, while developing countries worry that they will be left behind by restrictions that keep them from ever reaching that level of industrialization.

Obama addressed this imbalance directly, warning that all would suffer if the planet continues to grow warmer at its current pace, but that smaller economies could suffer most from drought, famine and other environmental impacts.

A future of rising seas and temperatures, Obama said, “is not one of strong economies, nor is it one where fragile states can find their footing. That future is one that we have the power to change, right here, right now. But only if we rise to this moment.”

Since the agreement being sought is nonbinding, it wouldn’t require congressional authorization if it comes through. Back home, there does seem to be a growing sense of the threat posed by climate change, with two-thirds of people calling it a serious threat in a new ABC News poll out Monday morning — but the sense of what to do about it isn’t falling where Obama would like: Just 43 percent of people believe most scientists agree on the causes (the number within the scientific community is close to 99 percent agreement about humans causing the changes), and only 47 percent say the federal government should do more than it is doing now to try to deal with global warming, down from a high of 70 percent under the Bush administration eight years ago.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reflected those sentiments in an interview on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on Monday morning, calling Obama’s warning of global warming as a top threat “one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics.”

“When we have large groups of people that want to blow up every one of our cities, that want to destroy our country, that want to kill our people, and he’s worried about global warming,” Trump said. “I think it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, or perhaps most naive.”

“Tackling climate change is a shared mission for mankind. All eyes are now on Paris,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking shortly after Obama. Xi called for countries to determine their own best solutions and for an agreement that includes “global sustainable development at a high level and bring about new international cooperation featuring win-wins.”

Obama and Xi held a bilateral meeting before the speeches to reiterate their commitment to climate cooperation, as well as picking up on the cyber-hacking agreements they made during Xi’s visit to Washington in September, denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and fulfilling the commitments of the P5+1 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called the conference “crucial,” saying he hopes it “proves to be a turning point … [in] reaching an ambitious, sustainable and international agreement to face climate change.”

“We know how large the phenomenon is, and we know how disastrous climate change can be for humanity,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said.

Unlike during the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, which collapsed without an agreement, this year’s conference front-loaded the speeches from leaders in an attempt to have them urge progress rather than try to head off another failure.

Obama took to that approach, putting an agreement in his well-worn frame of choosing hope over cynicism.

“Here in Paris, we can show the world what’s possible when we come together united by common effort and with a common purpose,” Obama said. “The next generation is watching what we do.”