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 At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years
of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations
against poor, imperiled island states against rising economic
powerhouses, Fabius urged officials from nearly 200 nations to
support what he hopes will be a final draft.
"Our responsibility to history is immense," Fabius told thousands of
officials, including President Francois Hollande and U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry, in the main hall of the conference venue on the
outskirts of Paris.
"If we were to fail, how could we rebuild this hope?" he asked. "Our
children would not understand or forgive us."
Barring any last-minute objections as negotiators pore over the
final text for the next few hours, they will reconvene at around
1545 local time (9.45 a.m. EST) to approve the agreement, a major
breakthrough in global efforts to avert the potentially disastrous
consequences of an overheated planet.
Calling it an "ambitious and balanced" agreement, Fabius said it
would mark a "historic turning point" for the world. Hollande
cautioned that the pact would not be "perfect for everyone", urging
delegates to see the common need.
"Faced with climate change our destinies are bound together," he
said.
In talks that lasted into the early morning, officials appeared to
have resolved the final sticking points, and Fabius highlighted the
key points: a more ambitious goal for limiting the rise in global
temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius; a $100 billion a year
floor for funding developing nations beyond 2020; and a five-year
cycle for reviewing national pledges to take action on greenhouse
gas emissions.
Prior to the session, China's top negotiator Gao Feng said there
"there is hope today" for a final pact, while Marshall Islands
Foreign Minister Tony De Brum told Reuters: "I think we're done
here."
A deal, if finalised, would be a powerful symbol to world citizens
and a potent signal to investors - for the first time in over two
decades, both rich and poor nations will agree to a common vision
for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and a roadmap for ending two
centuries of fossil fuel dominance.
While some climate change activists and U.S. Republicans will likely
find fault with the accord - either for failing to take sufficiently
drastic action, or for overreacting to an uncertain threat - many of
the estimated 40,000 officials and environmentalists who set up camp
on the outskirts of Paris say they see it as a long overdue turning
point.
 Six years after the previous climate summit in Copenhagen ended in
failure and acrimony, the Paris pact appears to have rebuilt much of
the trust required for a concerted global effort to combat climate
change, delegates say.
"Whereas we left Copenhagen scared of what comes next, we'll leave
Paris inspired to keep fighting," said David Turnbull, Director at
Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organization
opposed to fossil fuel production.
NOT ENOUGH, OR TOO MUCH?
From the outset, critics have said the emerging deal had serious
weaknesses, most prominently the fact that envisaged emissions cuts
will not be enough to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius
(3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, the level scientists say
is needed to avert the worst effects of warming including severe
droughts and rising sea levels. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the
last major climate deal agreed in 1997, the Paris pact will also not
be a legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly
fail to pass the U.S. Congress. Instead, it will be largely up to
each nation to pursue greener growth in its own way, making good on
detailed pledges submitted ahead of the two-week summit.
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And in the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a
dangerous endeavor that threatens to trade economic prosperity for
an uncertain if greener future.
Still, by charting a common course, officials hope executives and
investors will be more willing to spend trillions of dollars to
replace coal-fired power with solar panels and windmills.
"It will be up to business, consumers, citizens and particularly
investors to finish the job," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,
director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
A deal in Paris would mark a legacy-defining achievement for U.S.
President Barack Obama, who has warned not to "condemn our children
to a planet beyond their capacity to repair".
'HIGH AMBITION'
Leaders of vulnerable low-lying countries - who brought together
more than 100 nations in a "high ambition coalition" at the talks,
striving for the strongest possible language - have portrayed the
Paris talks as the last chance to avoid the catastrophic
consequences of rising temperatures.
Without joining together for immediate action, they had warned,
greenhouse gas emissions would be certain to push the planet's
ecosystem beyond the 2C tipping point. They appeared to have carried
the day, as Fabius said the text would seek to keep the rise to
"well below" 2 degrees Celsius and if possible to limit global
warming to 1.5 degrees.
While scientists say national pledges thus far are still too little
to prevent that happening, the agreement should set out a roadmap
for steadily increasing or "ratcheting up" those measures in order
to head off calamity. Fabius said those efforts would occur every
five years.
President Xi Jinping has promised that carbon dioxide emissions from
China's rapidly developing economy will start falling from around
2030, and does not want to revisit the target. Delegates said China
had also reasserted demands that developed nations do far more to
curb greenhouse gas emissions, mostly the result of burning coal,
gas and oil.
A final deal is expected to provide developing nations greater
financial security as they wean themselves away from coal-fired
power, and also suffer the financial consequences of a warming
climate on the earth's flora and fauna.
It will set a "floor" for such funding at $100 billion a year,
Fabius said, building on a 2009 pledge to provide at least that sum
by 2020.
(Reporting By Emmanuel Jarry, Bate Felix, Lesley Wroughton, Nina
Chestney and David Stanway; Editing by Jonathan Leff, Mark Heinrich
and David Evans)
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