Leaders and officials from more than 150 countries gathered in Paris this week to discuss climate change a potential deal to reduce emissions and reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. The developed world has been hesitant to lower carbon emissions, but they’re also hesitant to provide funding to the developing world in order to produce technologies that do that.
Rebecca Cruise, a comparative politics expert and the assistant dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of International Studies, told KGOU’s World Views it’s not the first time we’ve heard about these types of changes, and the significant divide between the Global North and the Global South.
“But this may be a time when the starts are aligning,” Cruise said. “The political will seems to have increased. You have a number of countries that are participating here, and unlike the Kyoto protocols that were signed a while ago, the United States and China are willing to take the lead here.”
Cruise says President Obama knows Congress won’t ratify any deal the president brings back to the U.S, but there are encouraging signs countries are starting to take this seriously, like a trillion-dollar deal organized by France and India, and the fact that more than 150 countries came to the talks with some sort of emissions plan in place.
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