View of the Week (Week-End Edition): On the aftermath of @COP21

We here @ #Outsiders have been on the Prowl at @COP21 and was very gratified as we saw the reporting on the agreement.    For this week-end edition of "View of the week" and in line with the mission of the Education Channel here, we wanted to feature guidance from +NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) that we view provides a solid overview of what was achieved and what is ahead--the real work does begin now and we look forward to being at the forefront of it as we also work on providing guidance on the UN Sustainable Development Goals which we believe is closely aligned.

It has been a good day in our World:

A great tide has turned against the central environmental challenge of our time—climate change. This morning, world leaders came together and adopted an historic agreement at the Paris Climate Summit. The agreement will tackle the grave threat of climate change and accelerate the shift to clean energy around the world. Nearly 200 countries, including the U.S., China, Europe and India, have pledged to reduce their climate wrecking pollution, strengthen their climate commitments every five years, protect people living on the frontlines of climate impacts, and help developing nations expand their clean energy economies. Most importantly, this agreement sets ambitious goals. It calls for holding global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with a first step of keeping us below 2 degrees of warming. For the U.S., our commitment to act on climate is embodied by the Clean Power Plan, the historic plan announced this summer to reduce carbon pollution from America’s coal-fired power plants. To the over 275,000 NRDC members and supporters who signed our petition calling on world leaders to take action in Paris—we thank you. Your voice has been heard. To the NRDC climate staff who worked around the clock to push Paris negotiators to reach an agreement, we thank you for your efforts. And to prominent NRDC supporters like Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio who were on the ground at the Paris Summit lending their influential voices to press for action, we thank you for your commitment. To find out more about what this historic climate agreement means, read the blog post from NRDC Program Director Susan Casey-Lefkowitz. Get a handy explainer on just what the agreement does from NRDC’s onEarth news website. Catch the wave of buzz on social media from NRDC’s Paris Action Page online. And stay tuned for more details from NRDC about the Paris Climate Summit’s historic agreement and what it’s going to take from all of us to put it into action. Thanks again for your support. Rhea Suh President, NRDC