Environmentalists, conservatives equally unhappy with climate pact

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday evening banged down a little green gavel to signal that the nearly 200 nations represented at the UN climate conference in Paris had reached unanimous agreement on greenhouse gas emission limits for beyond 2020 when current agreements run out.

“It may be a small gavel but it can do big things,” Fabius said.

Already there is controversy over exactly what big things the agreement will do and how it will be implemented. When the gavel fell, leaders at the conference broke into cheers, weeping and hugging each other. Some declared the pact the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel industry.

“What was once unthinkable has now become unstoppable,” Ban Ki-moon, South Korean UN Secretary-General, said in a statement.

But while leaders at the summit congratulated themselves, some environmental activists bemoaned an accord they believe falls short. The agreement has no teeth, they say, because much of it is not legally binding.

“It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises,” James Hansen, a climate expert toldNew Scientist.

Those who doubt man-made catastrophic global warming are equally unhappy with the Paris accord. They warn of severe economic consequences if countries drastically limit greenhouse gas emissions. They believe such measures are unnecessary since there has been no global warming during the past 18 years and valid science, ignored by environmentalists, shows global warming is not a threat. Any warming that has taken place poses no crisis, but the economic repercussions of moving away from fossil fuels will, they warn. Many also take issue with the huge amount of climate aid rich nations have pledged to developing countries.

“The final draft of the proposed ‘Paris Agreement’ gives disastrous primacy to politics, political correctness, and international wealth transfers at the expense of sound science,” James Taylor, vice president and senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Heartland Institute, said in a statement.

Four main areas of disagreement threw the summit into overtime on Saturday. The initial proposal called for a target goal to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. But representatives of small islands and low-lying states who fear they are at risk of drowning in rising seas wanted the limit set to 1.5 C, a target many experts said was unrealistic.

“All the evidence from the past 15 years leads me to conclude that actually delivering 1.5 degrees Celsius is simply incompatible with democracy,” Michael Grubb professor of international energy and climate change policy at University College in London toldThe Daily Telegraph.

The final pact sets the goal at “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and says nations will “pursue efforts” to limit the rise to 1.5 C.

Participants also disagreed about whether the agreement would be legally binding. The delegates made many parts of the pact voluntary in order to avoid a requirement that U.S. commitments be ratified by Congress, approval liberal Democrats knew they were unlikely to get.

Steven Groves, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation who anticipated the Obama administration’s end-run around Senate ratification, said it appears the present administration believes no member of Congress who questions climate science or disagrees with the administration’s policy views on climate change is competent to review the agreement.

“That is an alarming view on the role of Congress and particularly the Senate, where, as in this case, the international commitments being made by the executive branch have significant domestic implications,” he wrote in a Heartland Institute op-ed.

A third area of major controversy involved differentiating responsibilities between rich developed countries and poor developing nations. Past pacts have required developed economies, such as the United States, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but developing countries, such as China and India, have been exempted from such requirements, The New York Times reported. The new agreement requires action of some type from every country.

Financial responsibility was a big sticking point. Developed nations already pledged to developing countries $100 billion a year by 2020. But developing nations were concerned about what would happen after that. The new pact requires rich nations to maintain the pledge beyond 2020 and use it as a floor for future support, Reuters reported. Still, some developing nations are displeased because the pledge was put only in a preamble, rather than the legally binding portion of the agreement.

A fourth hurdle concerned requirements for countries to monitor, verify, and report their emission levels. The United States wanted a uniform system, but developing nations wanted less stringent monitoring and verification requirements than richer countries. The final pact requires all countries to use the same system but allows developing nations to report fewer details until they have better means to count their carbon emissions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.