World leaders gathered in Paris on Monday to participate in one of the biggest meetings in history.
New York Times reports 30,000 diplomats and delegates came together to create an effective deal in saving the planet from the dangerous effects of climate change. The two-week convention will generate a global pact concerning the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions --- the major cause of the Earth's warming.
"Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, since what is at stake is the future of the planet, the future of life," said French President Francois Hollande.
Every country is tasked to commit to new policies requiring nations to reduce their gas emissions despite how the global economy relies on it. According to some analyses, the negotiation will urge all countries to cut down emissions to at least half of the level needed just to curb its worst effects.
This deal is critical since efforts done in previous conventions --- Kyoto (1997) and Copenhagen (2009) --- were documented to have ended in failures. The planet's current situation calls for immediate global action to prevent rising of sea levels, intense droughts, destructive storms and floods, food shortages, deadly earthquakes and other horrible disasters in the near future.
Speaking at the conference was President Barack Obama who admitted coming from one of the world's largest polluters. "I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second-largest emitter," the US president said, "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."
"I'm sure there will be moments over the next two weeks where progress seems stymied and everyone rushes to write that we are doomed," Obama predicts. "But I am convinced that we are going to get big things done here. Keep in mind nobody expected that 180 countries would show up in Paris with serious climate targets in hand."
