A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, world leaders completed an ambitious international agreement to address climate change. But when the officials received the first copy of what was supposed to be the final draft, a one-word mistake threatened to derail their progress. Part of the agreement involved language that encouraged wealthy nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations in order to help transition to more sustainable systems. But the draft used the word "shall," which would have made it a legally-binding requirement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on the change, noting that previous versions of the document had used the word "should" instead. Officials tried to quickly figure out whether the swap had been made intentionally. Ultimately, they classified it as a typo, and hurriedly prepared a corrected version of the document, which was adopted without incident.

Comments

Sad to see Kerry...

[Anonymous Coward]

go full on Republican retard.

Re: Sad to see Kerry...

[sinij]

Destroyed? Because forced handouts to failed states has anything to do with reducing emissions? No, this is rebuffing to rent-seeking under guise of international climate change treaty. Western countries could agree to pay 100% of GDP and the world would be as f*(&ed on climate change.

Emission reductions are key critical component, not cash handouts.

Re:Perfect Illustration

[DNS-and-BIND]

No. It simply does not matter what America does. The real "climate change/global warming" fight is in the Third World, where people and governments freely pollute without a thought for the future. I know you don't believe me. Seriously, you would really benefit from a Critical Thinking course. A viewpoint is not invalid merely because the person who says it disagrees with you.

"The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse emissions, guess what -- that still wouldn't be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.

If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions ... it wouldn't be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world's carbon pollution comes from the developing world."
-- John Kerry, at the Paris Climate Summit, December 2015