World leaders at climate conference pledge to save the planet

A grimy, ramshackle exhibition park in a Paris banlieue felt like the headquarters of world government yesterday when President Francois Hollande opened the COP21 UN climate conference by telling 10,000 delegates, "The hope of all mankind rests on your shoulders."

In their speeches, the heads of state and government revisited the same themes: the urgency of reaching an agreement, their criteria for what would constitute a good agreement, and a collective mea culpa on the part of developed countries for having brought the world to such a condition.

"I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognises our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it," President Barack Obama said.

Kyoto

Mr Hollande played to the developing and emerging countries who have the power to scupper an agreement.

“How could we accept that the poorest countries, those who emit the least greenhouse gases, be the most vulnerable and those most affected?” he asked. “It is in the name of climate justice that I come before you today.”

The French foreign minister and conference president, Laurent Fabius, recalled an old woman in Bangladesh who had been flooded out of her home nine times, the "apocalyptic" disintegration of glaciers in Greenland and the dismay of a Bolivian farmer in Cochabamba.

Mr Obama had seen dramatic evidence of climate change in Alaska, “where the sea is already swallowing villages and eroding shorelines; where permafrost thaws and tundra burns”.

Most boasted of the efforts they are already making. "Our country is taking the lead," Vladimir Putin said in a deadpan tone. "We have gone beyond the commitments in Kyoto. By 2030 we plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent."

Though China is the world’s leading polluter, the Chinese president Xi Jinping enjoyed immense goodwill at Le Bourget for China’s tardy conversion to the crusade against climate change. “Tackling climate change is a shared mission for mankind,” he said.

Mr Obama said he believed, like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, "that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us."

Mr Hollande was doubtless the most ambitious speaker. There were shades of President Michael D Higgins when he said that "our greatest challenge is to move from globalisation based on competition to a model based on co-operation, where it will be more profitable to protect than destroy. . . We must establish a pact of equality between north and south, a partnership between man and nature."

More prosaically, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon asked the heads of state and government to bring their national negotiators into line. Climate change talks have taken on a life of their own, and diplomats complain that some of the 1,500 negotiators who drew up the 55-page draft accord have become obsessed with detail.

“I urge you to instruct your negotiators to choose the path of compromise and consensus,” he said. “Bold climate action is in the national interest of every single country represented at this conference. The time for brinkmanship is over.”

Bataclan

There was an almost sheepish admission that the developing world has not yet coughed up the $100 billion in annual aid for adaptation and mitigation which it promised six years ago. “We must show that we will deliver on what we promised in Copenhagen,” said the German chancellor

Angela Merkel

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Mr Ban also confirmed his wish to see a key demand of developing countries fulfilled at COP21. “Developed countries must keep their pledge to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020. This same amount should serve as the floor for post-2020 finance commitments.” At the moment, the developed countries have mustered pledges for only $85 billion.

Before coming to the conference, several world leaders went to Paris’s 11th district, to pay their respects to the 89 people slaughtered at the Bataclan concert hall. Accompanied by Mr Hollande, Mr Obama had gone directly from Orly airport to the makeshift memorial on Sunday night, to lay a white rose on the pile of flowers.

“We salute the people of Paris for insisting this crucial conference go on,” the US leader said in his speech. It was, he added, “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 terrorism,” Mrs Merkel said.