The Pending Paris Accord: Not Your Father's Climate Agreement

In interviews with dozens of ministers, negotiators and longtime U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) observers over the past year, most agreed that the once neatly divided world of rich and poor countries is gone.

'It's everybody together'

In its place is a more complicated and dynamic system in which countries of all levels of wealth and development are figuring out not whether to shoulder responsibility but at what level and how to finance the transition to clean power.

"Yes, there used to be the poor guys and the rich guys, the polluters and the guys that are feeling the impact.  That kind of division of blame and labor," said Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum.

But, he said, "It's not us and the big guys anymore.  It's everybody together."

So far, 138 countries, including the members of the European Union, have come forward with plans to cut or ratchet down their emissions, and there will likely be a few more that will be wrapped into a final document to be signed in Paris.

That, de Brum and others said, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  The list includes not just big players like the United States and China, but also war-torn countries like Rwanda, tiny islands like Tuvalu, and poverty-stricken nations like Bangladesh.

"This framing that it's rich versus poor makes it sound like it's only the rich countries who have to act, who have to pay, or who are acting and paying.  It's a much more complex picture than that," said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the World Resources Institute's climate program.

Under the radar are the countries in the middle -- those who are not yet making an emissions splash, but whose rapid economic and carbon growth guarantees they will be among the major climate players of the future.

Read more at The Pending Paris Accord:  Not Your Father's Climate Agreement