PARIS—A U.N.-sponsored climate change summit opened Monday, Nov. 30, amid gathering clouds of global conflict that threaten to overshadow the negotiations.
More than 150 heads of state, including President Barack Obama, attended the opening of the summit. Its benchmark for success: to reach an international deal to limit emissions and hold the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
“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 recognizes our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to do something about it,” Obama told conferees Monday.
Without such a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists claim, catastrophic worldwide consequences will occur by the end of the century because of man’s effect on the environment.
Others question the value of the temperature target and the overall utility of the summit (dubbed COP21), which is expected to bring more than 40,000 delegates and 3,000 journalists to a city still reeling from the most deadly attacks since World War II.
