World leaders launched an ambitious attempt on Monday to hold back the earth's rising temperatures, with French President Francois Hollande saying the world was at "breaking point" in the fight against global warming.
Some 150 heads of state and government, including US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, urged each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining to steer the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels, Reuters reported.
They arrived at United Nations climate change talks in Paris accompanied by high expectations and armed with promises to act. After decades of struggling negotiations and the failure of a summit in Copenhagen six years ago, some form of landmark agreement appears all but assured by mid-December.
Over the next two weeks, negotiators will hammer out what would be the strongest international climate pact yet.
"What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet, is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it," said Obama, one of the first leaders to speak at the summit. He called for an "enduring framework for human progress", one that would compel countries to steadily ramp up their carbon-cutting goals and openly track progress against them.
