Obama admits US role in global warming, urges actions
US President Barack Obama acknowledged that the United States is at least partly to blame for the life-threatening climate change and urged world leaders to reach a landmark deal to counter the threat before it dooms the planet.
"I come here personally as the leader of world’s biggest economy and second biggest emitter to say that America not only acknowledges its role in climate change but embraces doing something about it," Obama said at the opening session of a climate conference in Paris on Monday.
The US president cast the UN conference, attended by 196 nations, as potentially the last chance to address the issue of climate change.
“One of the enemies we will be fighting at this conference is cynicism. The notion we can't do anything about climate change,” Obama said.
The conference, which is scheduled to conclude on December 11, aims to reach an agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions that cause global warming.
Obama pledged financial resources to help the poorest nations of the world transition to economies that are less dependent on fossil fuels.
“For I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. there is such a thing as being too late,” Obama said.
“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,” he said. “Then we will not be too late for them.”
Some 151 world leaders gathered on the exhibition halls at Le Bourget Airport just outside the French capital amid heightened security in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks that killed at least 130 people.
In his speech, Obama characterized the accord as a rebuke to the terrorists who carried out the Paris attacks.
“We salute the people of Paris for insisting this crucial conference go on," he said, calling it, “an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us for building the future we want for our children.”
In her opening remarks, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told world leaders that "never before has a responsibility so great been in the hands of so few. The world is looking to you."
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