Sunday, December 13, 2015

Patria ratifies "COP21" climate change deal

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President François Hollande and other macro-world leaders celebrate the climate deal reached in Paris.
Climate change affects unrecognized microstates just as much as it affects Canada, the United States and other real-world macrostates. Consequently, notwithstanding a dissident voice from Australia claiming that climate change is a UN hoax in order to impose an authoritarian New World Order, Patria's 50th Congress has ratified the "COP21" Paris climate accord that US President Barack Obama considers "the best chance we have to save the one planet we have". The deal, reached after two weeks of negotiations among almost 200 recognized macro-world countries, aims to curb global warming to less than 2ºC (3.6ºF) by the end of the century.

The key measures in the agreement, which is mostly voluntary and not legally binding, include

• To peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century

• To keep global temperature increase "well below" 2C (3.6F) and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C

• To review progress every five years

• $100 billion (USD) a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future.

As in most of the real macro-world, climate change (not necessarily "global warming", as some of the changes such as melting polar ice caps can cause colder winters and increased snowfall) is recognized as a serious, hot-button issue in Patria, though there is some question as to whether climate change is caused by human activity, is naturally caused, or is an act of God. Human-caused climate change skeptics in Patria and elsewhere note that there is even evidence of climate change on Mars, which is apparently not being blamed on the Martians.