President Barack Obama praised a landmark climate change agreement approvedSaturday in Paris, saying it could be "a turning point for the world." "The Paris agreementestablishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis," thePresident said, speaking from the White House.
"It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in aneffective way." He praised American leadership but noted that all participating nations willhave to cooperate.
"I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world," Obama said, calling theagreement "The best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got." Though theplan was hailed as a milestone in the battle to keep Earth hospitable to human life, criticssay it is short on specifics, such as how the plan will be enforced or how improvements willbe measured.
The accord achieved one major goal. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures and strives for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if possible.