US-China climate deal surprises after secret negotiations
The climate change agreement between the United States and China caught the world by surprise after months of secret negotiations, built on an opening that arose last year when President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in the California desert.
The deal, announced Wednesday, could mark a turning point in international negotiations because for the first time it brings together the two largest emitters of heat-trapping gases.
Whether it will actually help clean up the atmosphere and slow the increase in world temperatures remains to be seen. But the agreement clearly signals that Obama intends to charge ahead on the issue in his final two years in office, even though many of Congress' staunchest supporters of action lost in last week's elections.
