Paris climate deal moves closer to taking force

The United Nations took a big step toward entering the Paris climate change agreement into force Wednesday when 31 countries submitted ratification paperwork.

Representatives of the countries submitted their ratifications at a ceremony during the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday morning, bringing the total ratifying countries to 60.

{mosads}The agreement has now surpassed the 55-country threshold it needs to take force. But the countries together represent only 48 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Resources Institute — short of the 55 percent threshold that is also necessary.

“The remarkable support for this agreement reflects the urgency and the magnitude of this challenge,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the Wednesday event.

Ban, President Obama and other world leaders hope to get the agreement into force by the end of the year.

That would make it more difficult for Republican Donald Trump to completely unravel the pact if he becomes president. But it would not be impossible for him to fulfill his pledge to “cancel” the agreement, since the emissions-cutting goal that Obama promised as part of the pact is not binding through international law.

“I am absolutely confident that the Paris agreement will come into force this year,” Secretary of State John Kerry said at the Wednesday event.

Kerry thanked the countries that ratified the agreement, but said that world leaders, businesses and others still have a lot of work to do to enforce the pact.

“Nobody comes here to rest on our laurels,” he said.

The pact comprises emissions cuts that each of the world’s nearly 200 countries internally determined would be feasible.

Obama promised a 26 to 28 percent reduction in the United States’s carbon emissions by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.