Nearly 150 world leaders are meeting in Paris over one mission: agree on legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in hopes of slowing human-driven global warming.
And a day before the heads of the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses — China and the United States — are to sit down together at the COP21 on Monday, a symbolic bright orange flag has popped up in Beijing.
On Sunday, the city issued its worst smog alert of the year, state-run news agency Xinhua reported, bumping the warning level from yellow to orange. As a result, factories are required to shut down or ratchet down output, and heavy-duty trucks must stay off the roads.
Though smog and greenhouse gasses are not completely synonymous, they both have common sources, so the shutdown will also temporarily lower greenhouse gas emissions.
COP stands for Conference of Parties, and this is their 21st meeting and will last altogether for nearly two weeks. The Paris gathering is also named the Paris Climate Change Conference.
Terror, security, clashes
It kicks off under the specter of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris that killed 130, and authorities have clamped down on demonstrations out of security concerns.
Nevertheless, disappointed protesters turned out and some clashed briefly with police at the Place de la Republique on Sunday, where some of them had placed rows of shoes and name tags to represent demonstrators not allowed to show up.
Police arrested more than 200 people after protesters pelted officers with shoes, bottles and even candles police said were taken from memorials to those killed in the terror attacks.
Paris Police Chief Michel Cadot said taking the candles and using them against police showed “an extreme lack of respect to those events.”
Riot police responded with tear gas.
French President Francois Hollande called the clashes “scandalous” and said authorities knew “troubling elements” would arrive in Paris for the talks and said that was why “these sorts of assemblies were banned and some were ordered to stay home.”
In many countries, people gathered to protest against manmade climate change. There is a broad consensus among scientists that global warming is driven by human activity, foremost the burning of fossil fuels.
Biggest players meet
U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who are to meet at around 9:30 a.m. local time, are undoubtedly the biggest players necessary to achieve the ambitious goal of a global legally binding agreement.
Obama will make official remarks three hours later. World leaders will also observe a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the November 13 terror attacks.
A look at the history of the COP illustrates the challenge in achieving this year’s goal.
The COP was founded to follow up on the Rio Convention in 1992, which kicked off a global political response to climate change, organizers say.
Probably the best-known milestone to come out of a previous COP was the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, a nonbinding agreement by 192 states to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
Previous failures
The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and dropped out of it completely in 2001. Canada dumped it, too, and China, India and other developing countries were exempt from it.
It has taken 20 years of U.N. negotiations to reach this attempt at a legally binding global emissions agreement to prevent a global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius higher than during preindustrial times, COP organizers have said.
President Hollande met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday. Afterward, Ban’s office released a statement praising Hollande and France for going ahead with the meeting despite the terror attack. He said he and Hollande had agreed that “failure to reach an agreement was not an option and would have disastrous consequences.”
More than 40,000 delegates from 195 countries are attending COP21.
