Paris climate talks extended until at least Saturday

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at COP21

(Image credit: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images)

published 11 December 2015

The international summit to address climate change outside Paris, COP21, was scheduled to end on Friday, but French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday morning that the talks will be extended for at least one day. "I will not present the text Friday evening, as I had thought, but Saturday morning," he told BFM television. "There is still work to do," he added. "Things are going in the right direction."

Fabius presented a draft agreement on Thursday night, but a bloc of developing nations — China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia — rejected it as trying to shift the burden of combating climate change from rich Western nations to less-wealthy nations. "We are going backwards," Malaysia's Gurdial Singh Nijar said early Friday morning. The share of the financial and logistical burdens, plus rules on reporting and verifying each nation's carbon dioxide emissions, are expected to be the last things ironed out.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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