--- title: 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords | TIME description: As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency. canonical: https://time.com/video/RNoECeNp/ og:title: 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords og:description: As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency. og:url: https://time.com/video/RNoECeNp/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RNoECeNp/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords twitter:description: As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RNoECeNp/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RNoECeNp.m3u8) (3:10)  _Published 2017-01-18. As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:22 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: Trump's Election](/video/93eTfkcq/) ### 10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: Trump's Election [10 Days That Define the Obama Presidency: Zimmerman Verdict](/video/O5QiWvGn/) ### 10 Days That Define the Obama Presidency: Zimmerman Verdict [10 Days That Define the Obama Presidency: Sandy Hook](/video/Zkmy7UcW/) ### 10 Days That Define the Obama Presidency: Sandy Hook --- ## Transcript Two weeks ago in Paris. I said before the world that we needed a strong, global agreement to accomplish this goal. An enduring agreement that reduces global carbon pollution and sets the world on a course to a low carbon future. A few hours ago, we succeeded. You have the Paris Climate Accords where you know, through rather complex and stepped framework, you had the world's leading powers all agreeing that they would take steps to try and bring down the production of carbon. Nobody really expected China to Wake up one morning, and [ UNKNOWN ] cap its own emissions. And over the course of several years of [ INAUDIBLE ] negotiation, the Whitehouse and the Chinese government developed a real partnership, areas of common ground. Yes, there are gonna be special [ UNKNOWN ] from developing countries, but the developed world will move first. Partly that was driven by how he said Issues of pollution and the domestic issue of the climate in China but also a desire within the United States but by the present to turn climate into a legacy issue in an area, that he thinks that in 20- 30 years he'll be remembered as a leader on. And my fellow leaders accepting this challenge will not reward us with Moments of victory that are clear or quick. Our progress will be measured differently in the suffering that is averted, and a planet that's preserved. Whereas President Bush had been pretty lateral in the way he approached things, President Obama Envisioned a far more multilateral, internationally agreed upon framework. And he sought to heal a lot of the animosity that existed in the world. He sought Quietly in his first term and then more aggressively in the second term to remake the US relationship with Cuba. And then the other big diplomatic effort he undertook, also in his second term, was to try and solve, at least for a time, the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. And this involved a multi year process of first Increasing sanctions, and really harming the economy of Iran, and then promising at the end that those sanctions could be released if the country agreed to essentially abandon for a time its nuclear research program, and allow inspectors to ensure that that was actually happening. But it really reset in a very dramatic way. The American relationship with Iran, which had been basically limited to animosity since the 1970s. I mean, the President's legacy internationally will certainly be defined by his desire to work with international partners, international agencies. On the negative side you end of things like Syria. Sort of the quagmire there where the desire to sort of not go it alone and foreign allies with different interests. Different self interests, different moral views on the issue that led to the US not really doing much of anything. That might be our most significant foreign policy failure But it comes from the same place as some of his greatest foreign policy achievements, and that's sort of the grand irony of the Obama foreign policy. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Days that Define the Obama Presidency: The Paris Accords","description":"As President Obama's two terms in office come to a close, TIME is taking a look back at the most pivotal moments of his presidency. 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