The numbers behind climate change

Since taking office as the United Nations chief in 2007, Ban has been designating the issue of climate change as one of top priorities of his work.

However, the report also found that the largest relative emissions reductions in 2030 are expected from Australia, Brazil, and Canada.

Smoke and steam are discharged from chimneys and cooling towers at a coal-fired power plant in Huainan city, east China’s Anhui province. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol only included binding targets for advanced industrialized countries, on the understanding that those countries have higher per-capita emissions and account for the majority of the world’s emissions.

On the sidelines of the meeting, he will meet with foreign leaders including French President Francois Holland and US President Barrack Obama. “We had learned those new figures during the process and already factored them in”.

He added that during the same time the country’s capacity of hydropower had doubled, its capacity of wind power had increased by 60-fold and its solar power capabilities soared by 280 fold.

What’s changed – even just in the past year – is the global resolve to address climate change in a meaningful way.

Xie has led his country’s global negotiations at every gathering on the issue since the United Nations conference in Bali in 2007.

A Western University assistant professor will be among the 20,000 delegates helping hammer out a new climate change agreement in Paris. China will be a key player at the Paris summit in the face of disputes over whether developed or developing states should bear more of the burden for emission cuts. Nick Molho, Executive Director of the Aldersgate Group said: “With the UK Met Office recently confirming that global temperatures are set to rise by more than one degree above pre-industrial levels for the first time, the UK needs to build on the emission reductions achieved to date and put itself in a situation where it can tackle the challenge of risky climate change in a way that is timely, cost-effective and delivers economic benefits in terms of growth and jobs to the UK”.

“So emissions from construction, transportation and service sectors will keep rising”.

The goal is to get the broadest possible participation, and it’s working.

Trained as a physicist, Xie, 66, knows his numbers and statistics. It is absolutely unacceptable to see some of those big fossil giants becoming a part of the climate change conference.

Our message is clear and simple: “we cannot fight poverty, or the manifold humanitarian crises, unless we take urgent action to tackle climate change”. And what scenarios do we want to avoid?

The usually loquacious and jovial Xie remains optimistic about the outcome in Paris, predicting a global agreement that would be “satisfactory to no-one but acceptable to everyone”.