Paris climate talks, day 10: What we’re reading

Christiana Figueres on what’s next after Paris, a backstage look at Bill Gates’ climate initiative, and the blame game revs up as negotiations reach the final stage.

Tick, tick, tick ... Negotiators at the United Nations climate summit in Paris are scheduled to finish their work on 11 December, and by all reports they are making steady, if slow, progress. Here’s what we're reading.

1. Pointing fingers — in every direction

Nature special: 2015 Paris climate talks

Negotiators from several developing nations say that Saudi Arabia is trying to impede a climate deal at the Paris talks, The Guardian reports. “The world is changing and it’s making them very nervous,” says one environmentalist. But Saudi Arabia is not the only nation being accused of plotting to throw a spanner in the works: the Financial Times reports that China is trying to weaken the agreement being negotiated in Paris. Meanwhile, Time magazine argues that the United States has emerged as the “unlikely hero” of the Paris talks. One of the chief US negotiators, secretary of state John Kerry, tells The Guardian that “consensus is being slowly built”.

2. Christiana Figueres on the Paris talks

“What is going to happen here in Paris is certainly that the direction will be very clear, but the pace is going to be insufficient,” UN climate chief Christiana Figueres tells Nature in a wide-ranging Q&A. Watch a snippet of the interview below.

3. Behind the scenes of Bill Gates’ climate moonshot

“When Bill Gates arrived at the Élysée Palace to meet the French president François Hollande and other officials in June, he brought a message.” The New York Times looks at how the billionaire philanthropist enticed governments and industry to work together on a US$20-billion plan to advance clean-energy technology.

4. Blast from the past

The New York Times has unearthed a gem from its archives — a story from 1956 that carries the headline “Warmer Climate on Earth May Be Due to More Carbon Dioxide in the Air”. Fun fact: the average annual atmospheric CO₂ level in 1956 was just 314 parts per million (p.p.m.). Scientists say that the world is poised to reach an ominous threshold as early as next year, when the average annual CO₂ concentration could hit 400 p.p.m..