Reuters reports that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has announced that despite Friday’s attacks and concerns about France’s ability to detect and stop such attacks in the future, the upcoming international climate-change talks will still be held in Paris at the end of the month. One hundred and eighteen world leaders and 20,000 to 40,000 delegates, including President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, are expected to attend.
Said Valls, “[It] will be held because it’s an essential meeting for humanity.” (The goal of the conference is to come up with global deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions.) Valls also suggested that attending the summit would be an effective way to show solidarity with France.
Environmentalists had been hoping to stage a massive protest in Paris on the eve of the meeting, possibly attracting as many as hundreds of thousands of people, but French authorities might balk at that idea, and at least until next Thursday, all mass protests in Paris have been banned for security reasons. According to the Wall Street Journal, France had planned to reinstate border controls during the conference as a security measure, something they have now already done in response to Friday’s attacks.
