In a historic vote held at the plenary session of the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, a majority of the members voted in favour of ratifying the Paris Agreement. The vote paved the way for the entry into force of the Agreement — to keep global warming levels less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels - in November this year, with 610 out of 678 parliament members voting in favour of the ratification. Only 38 EU member votes were in the negative, and the rest of the members abstained from voting on Tuesday.

As per the rules of the Agreement, adopted in Paris last year, the cumulative emissions of the ratifying parties must cross the minimum required threshold of 55 per cent of global emissions for it to enter into force. Tuesday’s EU vote will help the treaty to cross this minimum. Accounting for approximately 12 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, the EU-28 nations will add to the 52 per cent of global emissions that the 62 ratifying parties have covered already.

At a press conference held soon after the vote, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was present during the vote, said that EU nations will formally submit their joint instrument of ratification in a few days, and with this, the Paris Agreement will be ready to take effect in November.

Only seven EU nations — France, Germany, Malta, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Portugal — have ratified the Paris Agreement at the national level. However, after the EU submits its instrument of ratification, the member nations will work on following the requisite procedures back at home.

Mr. Ban was glad that the ratifying parties now included the most powerful economies, responsible for human-induced climate change, as well as the most vulnerable countries, facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said that the EU is looking to formally submit its ratification instruments on Friday, which will ensure that the treaty comes into force by November 7, when the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change takes off in Marrakesh, Morocco.

As per the rules, the Agreement will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 parties, representing at least 55 per cent of global emissions have ratified it.

In a statement released on Tuesday, EU President Jean-Claude Juncker said, “Today the European Union turned climate ambition into climate action. The Paris Agreement is the first of its kind and it would not have been possible were it not for the European Union. Today we continued to show leadership and prove that, together, the European Union can deliver.”

In the course of the parliamentary debate on Tuesday, some EU members, who were against the ratification, raised concerns about citizens having to pay more for cars, heating, and electricity, due to possible outcomes of the climate agreement entering into force.

However, the overwhelming majority of members, who voted in favour, sought to put such fears to rest by pointing out that instead of reducing emissions, options for storing carbon could be explored, and that Europe’s economy will remain competitive despite the proposed emission cuts.

Other EU members of the parliament sought to point out that since the provisions of the Paris Agreement are now set to become legally binding, it must be ensured that the US, one of the largest countries in terms of GHG emissions, is not allowed to pursue its own interest, but play its legitimate part in cutting emissions.

Coming as the vote does shortly after the EU held a referendum on the refugee crisis, which saw member nations raising their voices against migration, Mr. Ban pointed out that addressing climate change will also help the EU address the refugee crisis, as harsh climatic conditions were also one of the triggers for migration, besides political instability and violence.

“People do not find their places sustainable for living due to climate change. Addressing this will definitely reduce the possibilities of people fleeing or leaving their country for better opportunities,” he said. </s> The momentous Paris climate change agreement is set to take effect on November 4, after an alliance of the planet’s largest polluters and small island countries affected by rising oceans pushed things past a culminating point on Wednesday.

The news was met with applause from world leaders. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the solid international support as “a testament for the urgency of action,” while United States President Barack Obama heralded the news as “a turning point for our planet,” the Washington Post reports.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq announced Wednesday that the European Union and ten other countries – Austria, Bolivia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Malta, Nepal, Portugal, and Slovakia – submitted their instruments of ratification on Wednesday. The percentage of emissions these countries account for in total surpassed the 55% threshold necessary for the treaty to take effect, Haq said.

The agreement will take effect 30 days after 55 countries that are responsible for at least 55% of the world’s greenhouse gasses have adopted it. As of Tuesday, 62 countries had agreed, but they had only accounted for 52% of emissions.

The United Nations website declared that as of Wednesday, 73 of the 197 countries in the treaty that account for 56.87% of global emissions have deposited their instruments of ramification.

The Paris agreement holds participating countries, rich and poor alike, to take action and address the rise in global temperatures that are currently raising sea levels, melting ice caps and glaciers, and rainfall patterns. The agreement mandates nations to present their respective plans on how to reduce emissions to limit global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius.

The goals set out are not legally binding, but the treaty does entail that countries report on their emissions and progress on achieving the goals set out last year in the plans they submitted. The countries are likewise required to maintain these programs, update them every five years and take measure to implement their goals.

The agreement was ratified by consensus on December 12, 2015, and has taken off in what experts believe to be a record speed for international negotiations, highlighting the urgency that global warming poses and the need to seal the deal before Ban and Obama leave office.

The next UN climate conference will begin on Nov. 7 in Marrakech, Morroco, where the first Conference of Parties to the Paris agreement will take place. </s> Nearly 200 nations hammered out a legally binding deal to cut back on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners, a Rwandan minister announced to loud cheers on Saturday, in a major step against climate change.

The deal, which includes the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and China, divides countries into three groups with different deadlines to reduce the use of factory-made hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, which can be 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases.

“It’s a monumental step forward,” US secretary of state John Kerry said as he left the talks in the Rwandan capital of Kigali late on Friday.

As Rwanda’s Minister for Natural Resources, Vincent Biruta, began spelling out the terms of the deal shortly after sunrise on Saturday, applause from negotiators who had been up all night drowned out his words.

Under the pact, developed nations, including much of Europe and the United States, commit to reducing their use of the gases incrementally, starting with a 10 per cent cut by 2019 and reaching 85 percent by 2036.

Many wealthier nations have already begun to reduce their use of HFCs.

Two groups of developing countries will freeze their use of the gases by either 2024 or 2028, and then gradually reduce their use. India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the Gulf countries will meet the later deadline.

They needed more time because they have fast-expanding middle classes and hot climates, and because India feared damaging its growing industries.

“Last year in Paris, we promised to keep the world safe from the worst effects of climate change. Today, we are following through on that promise,” said UN environment chief Erik Solheim in a statement.

The deal binding 197 nations crowns a wave of measures to help fight climate change this month. Last week, the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb climate-warming emissions passed its required threshold to enter into force after India, Canada and the European Parliament ratified it.

But unlike the Paris agreement, the Kigali deal is legally binding, has very specific timetables and has an agreement by rich countries to help poor countries adapt their technology.

The United Nations says phasing out HFCs will cost billions of dollars.

But a quick reduction of HFCs could be a major contribution to slowing climate change, avoiding perhaps 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) of a projected rise in average temperatures by 2100, scientists say.

Environmental groups had called for an ambitious agreement on cutting HFCs to limit the damage from the roughly 1.6 billion new air conditioning units expected to come on stream by 2050, reflecting increased demand from an expanding middle class in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The HFC talks build on the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which succeeded in phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used at that time in refrigeration and aerosols.

The aim was to stop the depletion of the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet rays linked to skin cancer and other conditions. </s> The Abe administration should not waste more time in seeking ratification of the Paris Agreement for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. It has now become certain that the international climate accord will enter into force early next month with ratification by more than 60 countries that account for over 55 percent of global emissions. If Japan fails to ratify the pact before it takes effect, the nation will not be able to take part in the initial rounds of making the rules for its implementation. Slow action on the accord by Japan, the world’s fifth-largest emitter, is all the more regrettable since the agreement requires participating countries to do more than what they already committed to when signing the deal.

The landmark deal adopted at the climate change conference in Paris last December sets a target of keeping the rise in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels within 2 degrees Celsius — and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees — and of cutting the man-made emissions of global-warming gases effectively to zero in the latter half of this century. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which imposed emissions reduction targets solely on advanced economies, all participants in the Paris accord — both developed and developing nations — will set voluntary goals to cut their emissions. The problem is, the voluntary plans submitted by countries ahead of the accord are deemed insufficient to achieve the goals.

India, which accounts for 4 percent of the world’s emissions, said Sunday it has completed the procedure to ratify the pact — the 62nd country to do so. The European Union has agreed to ratify the accord by Friday. The world’s two largest emitters, China and the United States, have already ratified the pact, and the treaty — which will enter into force once it’s been ratified by at least 55 countries that together account for 55 percent or more of global emissions — is now assured of taking effect by early November. If that happens, the countries that have ratified the pact will likely hold their first meeting during the Nov. 7-18 COP 22 conference of parties to the United Nations climate change framework treaty in Marrakech, Morocco.

That it is taking less than a year for the Paris Agreement to take effect — compared with more than seven spent years before the Kyoto Protocol came into force — seems to reflect a greater sense of crisis and urgency on the part of leaders of the major powers, given that the threat of global warming is already becoming evident today. Some experts warn that the rise in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels could hit 2 degrees by 2050 even if nations comply with the Paris accord, urging the countries to redouble their efforts to cut their emissions.

No such sense of urgency seems to be felt among Japan’s lawmakers or the government. Prodded by the prospect that the Paris Agreement would come into force as early as next month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the Diet last week that the government is ready to submit the pact to the current session of the Diet for prompt ratification. However, the issue does not appear to be a policy priority for his administration. The policy speech that he delivered at the outset of the current session on Sept. 26 did not touch at all on the Paris accord or even climate change. And while the government hurriedly prepares to submit the pact to the Diet, it’s not clear if it can be approved during the current session given the tight schedule of deliberations on other matters such as endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord.

The agreement dictates that a signatory will not be given the voting rights in the making of rules of its implementation until 30 days have passed after it submitted ratification documents to its secretariat. Japan may not be able to join the first meeting of the parties to the treaty except as an observer. To be discussed among the parties will be, for example, rules on the scheme to mutually verify the participating countries’ emissions and the framework for technological and financial assistance to developing countries.

By lagging behind others in the implementation of the agreement, Japan may not only invite the international reputation of a country not serious enough about climate change. Even more worrisome is the lack of discussions on additional steps that Japan should be taking to fight global warming. Before the Paris accord was adopted, Japan vowed to reduce emissions by 26 percent from 2013 levels in 2030. But these commitments by the signatories are not enough to achieve the pact’s goals, and the agreement calls on each participant to review their targets every five years to pursue deeper cuts.

Japan needs to promptly begin discussions on what more steps it can take to curb climate change. While the nation’s committed goal is less ambitious than the targets set by the U.S. and European powers, the government’s energy policy calls for a sizable share of coal-fired thermal power plants as the source of power supply, bucking the worldwide trend for a shift toward low-carbon economy.

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of effectively zero emissions by the latter half of the century will require radical changes in social and economic structures, but discussions for such efforts do not appear to be afoot in this country. The government should seek to promptly ratify and join in implementing the accord, but the process itself will only put this nation, like others, on the starting line of beefing up action on climate change. </s> OSLO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A global agreement to combat climate change will take force after support from European nations sent the accord across an important threshold on Wednesday, prompting U.S. President Barack Obama to hail it as a “historic day” for protecting the planet.

European nations, Canada, Bolivia and Nepal raised backing for the 2015 Paris Agreement to countries representing 56.87 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 percent needed for implementation, a United Nations website showed.

The deal will formally start in 30 days on Nov. 4, four days before the U.S. presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump opposes the accord and Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly supports it.

China and the United States joined up last month in a joint step by the world’s top emitters.

Obama called Wednesday “a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations” and he told reporters on the White House Rose Garden: “If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet.”

Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta - European Union nations which have completed domestic ratification and account for about four percent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday.

In total, 73 countries out of 195 have ratified the agreement, according to the U.N. website.

“Great job!” tweeted European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete.

The Europeans brought forward a formal submission of documents to the United Nations from a ceremony planned on Friday, fearing that other nations might ratify and trigger entry into force without them.

“We didn’t want to be upstaged,” an EU diplomat said.

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on the Paris Agreement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., October 5, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Many praised the rapid ratification of an agreement meant to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to limit floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels.

“What once seemed unthinkable is now unstoppable,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

But all said more work was needed.

“It is no exaggeration to say we are in a race against time,” said Thoriq Ibrahim, Environment Minister for the Maldives and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States which fears the impact of rising sea levels.

By contrast, it took eight years for the previous U.N. climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to gain enough backing to take effect. It obliged only rich nations to cut emissions and the United States stayed out of it.

Opposition continues in the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to Democrat Obama’s climate change policies.

Tourists protect themselves from the rain under umbrellas in front of the Eiffel tower as they visit the French capital during summer holidays in Paris, France July 19, 2011. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo

“The Paris climate deal would be disastrous for the American economy,” said House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican.

By contrast, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said ratification showed that a shift to a low-carbon economy is “urgent, inevitable, and accelerating faster than we ever believed possible”.

Still, current national pledges for cuts in emissions are insufficient to achieve a Paris goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

U.N. studies project that average world temperatures are set to rise by 3 degrees (5.4 Fahrenheit) or more by 2100, based on current trends. And this year is expected to prove the warmest since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015. </s> On Wednesday night a bipartisan UK Parliament passed an extraordinary measure: a national declaration of an Environment and Climate Emergency.

The UK is the first national government to declare such an emergency. The decision marks a renewed sense of urgency in tackling climate change, following a visit to Parliament by teenage activist Greta Thunberg , the broadcast of David Attenborough's documentary Climate Change: The Facts and 11 days of protest by environmental group Extinction Rebellion that paralysed parts of London.

There are now some 49 million people living under national, city and local declarations of a climate emergency around the world.

While there is no precise definition of what constitutes action to meet such an emergency, the move has been likened to putting the country on a "war footing", with climate and the environment at the very centre of all government policy, rather than being on the fringe of political decisions.

The UK are legally committed to a 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 (relative to their 1990 levels) and was recently recognised as one of just 18 developed economies that have driven down carbon dioxide emissions over the last decade.

Some city and local councils have set out their climate emergency policies to become carbon zero by 2030 built around renewable energy supplies, more energy-efficient housing and a host of other measures. Yesterday's decision in Parliament implies further national reductions and investment in this space.

The year 2030 is an important target. In spite of what climate contrarians might voice very loudly, five of our planet's warmest years on record have occurred since 2010, whilst 2018 experienced all manner of climate extremes that broke numerous global records.

It's sobering to realise that, because the oceans are a major sink of heat, the estimated 40-year delay in the release of this energy back into the atmosphere means the conditions of the last decade are in part a consequence of our pollution from the 1970s.

With the planet to experience further warming from the heat held by the oceans, there is increasing international focus on meeting the United Nation's Paris Agreement which was signed by 197 countries in 2016. This ground-breaking agreement has the ambitious global aim of preventing global temperatures from reaching 2˚C above pre-industrial levels (the late nineteenth century) by 2100, and ideally should be no more than 1.5˚C.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) has suggested that meeting this target means annual global carbon emissions must effectively halve between now and 2030, and then fall to zero by 2050. This is a target the UK opposition party Labour are now calling for.

More recent studies suggest even more ambitious cuts may be required.

Research in Australia has investigated the cost to the global economy if the Paris Agreement is not met and the world hits 4˚C warmer.

The values are eye-watering: an estimated US$23 trillion a year over the long-term. This has been likened to the world experiencing four to six global financial crises on the scale of 2008 every year.

In Australia, the cost would be on the order of A$159 billion a year, with most of the losses caused by drought-driven collapses in agricultural productivity and sea level rise. The expense to each Australian household has been put at the order of A$14,000.

The declaration of climate emergency by the UK comes at a crucial time in Australia, just two weeks out from a federal election. While the major parties have made public statements of support for the Paris Agreement, it remains unclear whether current and former leaders are fully aware of their obligations.

At a time when politicians discuss the need to "live within our means" when it comes to national finances, this does not appear to translate to the environment when we're considering future generations.

Instead we seem to be caught in a debate surrounding the costs of action rather than inaction. The next generation of Australian voters certainly don't seem confident about political commitments to their future as they hold their third national school strike tomorrow.

The welcome announcement from the UK is a major step in the right direction and potentially a watershed moment for a more sustainable global future. Is it too much to hope Australia could follow next?

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. </s> UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The landmark Paris agreement on climate change will enter into force on Nov. 4, after being pushed past a key threshold Wednesday by a coalition of the world’s largest polluters and small island nations threatened by rising seas.

President Barack Obama hailed the news as “a turning point for our planet,” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the agreement’s strong international support a “testament for the urgency of action.” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, called it: “A moment of bright hope in the increasingly discouraging landscape of climate science.”

U.N. Spokesman Farhan Haq said the EU, Canada and Nepal would deposit their instruments of ratification Wednesday, edging the percentage of emissions by ratifying countries past the 55 percent threshold needed for the treaty to take effect.

“I am delighted to announce that today the Paris Agreement will cross the second and final threshold needed for entry into force, and will enter into force on 4 November 2016,” Ban said in a statement issued from Europe. “Global momentum for the Paris Agreement to enter into force in 2016 has been remarkable. What once seemed unthinkable is now unstoppable. ”

The deal takes effect 30 days after 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions, have adopted it. Sixty-two countries had done so as of Tuesday but they accounted only for about 52 percent of emissions.

A U.N. website said that as of Wednesday afternoon 73 of the 197 parties to the treaty, accounting for 56.87 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, have deposited their instruments of ratification.

Obama welcomed the news with a special address in the Rose Garden.

“Today, the world meets the moment,” Obama said. “And if we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet.”

The Paris agreement commits rich and poor countries to take action to curb the rise in global temperatures that is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and shifting rainfall patterns. It requires governments to present national plans to reduce emissions to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

While the targets in the agreement are not legally binding, the treaty does require countries to report on emissions and their progress on reaching the goals in the national climate plans they submitted to the U.N. The countries are also required to maintain those plans, update them every five years and to pursue measures to implement their stated goals.

“It’s clearly a momentous moment in terms of global action on climate change,” said David Waskow, international climate director at World Resources Institute. “This has been much more rapid than anticipated and demonstrates political support for the agreement.”

The accord, which was adopted by consensus on Dec. 12, 2015, has entered into force at what is considered record speed for international diplomacy, reflecting a sense of urgency in the fight against global warming and a desire to seal the deal before Ban and Obama leave office.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supports the accord, while Republican Donald Trump opposes it.

International momentum had been building to ensure that the deal could enter force before the next U.N. climate conference, which starts Nov. 7 in Marrakech, Morocco.

Morocco’s Ambassador of Multilateral Negotiations Aziz Mekouar said with the treaty entering into force Marrakech will now host the first Conference of Parties to the Paris agreement.

“Last year, it was an historic event,” Mekouar said, referring to the conference where the agreement was first adopted. “This year, it’s even more of an historic event.”

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University, warned, however, that there’s still a long road ahead.

“There’s a lot of hard work ahead to fulfill the main Paris goal, avoiding dangerous climate change. Without focused efforts starting now, we are not going to avoid falling over a very steep cliff,” Oppenheimer said in an email.

Associated Press Writers Nancy Benac and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report. </s> (ABC NEWS) -- A senior White House official told ABC News that the President is poised to drop out of the Paris climate accord.

Trump has repeatedly called into question the science behind climate change, once calling it a "very expensive hoax." During his campaign, Trump said he would "cancel" the Paris agreement and his administration has ordered cuts to funding for climate science.

The non-binding international agreement went into effect last year and calls for countries to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement was signed by former Secretary of State John Kerry on Earth Day, April 22, 2016 on the U.S. behalf. President Obama signed it into law via executive action, bypassing the then Republican-controlled Senate.

What is the Paris Climate Agreement?

The Paris Agreement is an accord sponsored by the U.N. designed to help slow global climate change. The 147 parties who ratified the convention set a goal of limiting global temperatures increases this century to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 35.6 degrees Farenheit, above levels from the pre-industrial era, defined as the years 1850-1900. It also states an intention to work toward a more stringent limit of only 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 34.7 degrees Farenheit, above pre-industrial era levels.

After the conference, each country set its own "Nationally Determined Contributions" (NDCs) and agreed to report its progress regularly on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. To remain in the deal, the U.S. must cut its emissions by 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

Where do members of the Trump administration stand on the agreement?

Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump said he would roll back environmental protections and regulations and threatened to "cancel" the deal.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said The Paris Agreement is bad for America because it’s bad for jobs. However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon, said he supports staying in the deal. White House adviser Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure her father received information from experts in both the public and private sectors before making a decision on the agreement.

What are the consequences of withdrawing?

If the U.S. pulls out of The Paris Agreement, it would become one of the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions not included in the agreement, according to EPA data. The United States would become one of only three nations in a U.N. climate group not to be signed onto the deal, alongside Syria and Nicaragua.

“The Paris agreement was designed to be flexible so that parties could respond to changing domestic circumstances,” Andrew Light, a distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute told ABC News. Light said that the Trump administration could face fallout if it withdraws from the agreement.

“It could potentially harm U.S. businesses who are trying to compete with businesses from other countries in the exploding global market in renewable energy,” Light told ABC News. He went on to explain that withdrawal could look like “Trump is turning his back on the world” by walking away from the spirit of global cooperation that the Paris accord created.

State and religious leaders have expressed desire for Trump to continue U.S. participation in the agreement. The Pope gave Trump copies of his published works on climate change as a parting gift following their meeting on May 24, which some read as an encouragement toward the Paris accord.

Although the official cautions no decision is final until the president announces it, the source said the White House is now working on how to roll out and explain the reasons behind that announcement.

ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Conor Ferguson, Catherine Thorbecke, Michael Edison Hayden and Evan Simon contributed to this report. </s> The United Kingdom passed a law on Thursday that prescribes cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the country to net zero by 2050, the UK government said, adding that it, thus, became the first major economy to legislate lowering its contribution to global warming

LONDON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th June, 2019) The United Kingdom passed a law on Thursday that prescribes cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the country to net zero by 2050, the UK government said, adding that it, thus, became the first major economy to legislate lowering its contribution to global warming.

"The UK today became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050. The target will require the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, compared with the previous target of at least 80% reduction from 1990 levels," the government said in a statement.

According to the statement, the initiative to reach "net zero" target by 2050 was proposed by the Committee on Climate Change, the UK independent climate advisory body.

London has already managed to reduce emissions by 42 percent in comparison with the year of 1990, while growing the economy by 72 percent, the government stated.

The statement added that the government expected the number of workers employed in the environmental sectors of economy to grow to 2 million people alongside the value of exports from the low carbon economy to increase to 170 billion Pounds ($216 million) a year by 2030, the statement said.

"Net zero" implies offsetting any emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by such measures as planting more trees or using technology like carbon capture and storage.
The House of Representatives of the Netherlands passes the final bill of the climate agreement. The goal of the accord is to have the level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in 2030 the same as the level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in 1990.