Well, the Paris Agreement that grew out of the COP21 conference in France over the last couple of weeks, has been signed by the 196 participating nations. I’ve read the entire agreement and a great deal of the commentary (pro, con and in between) and while I don’t have any perspectives to offer that haven’t already seen the light of day, as a climate observer and concerned citizen, I feel like it’s my duty to outline my reaction. There may be one or two people out there who look to my writing for input and/or insight.
The headline to this post is the best summary I could come up with of my take. Overall, the Paris Agreement is disappointing but that chagrin must be tempered a bit by some overarching observations.
It’s not really a deal. Nothing in it is enforceable. It is all voluntary. My take is that if you’re a national government and you don’t really want to be held accountable for your promises, that’s probably because you have no real intention of keeping them.
It is ambitious in its goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Centigrade and in stating (without any specifics) a “stretch goal” of staying under 1.5 degrees Centigrade. These are the goals we need to reach. I’m slightly encouraged that all 196 recognized nations on the planet agreed on those goals and their importance. It’s a sizable but not decisive step.
There is real optimism and hope that all 196 recognized nations on the planet could agree on anything of substance. Perhaps the ultimate contribution of the Paris Agreement will be to serve as a template for how to attain such consensus on other global issues.
I like the so-called “ratchet” provision that requires nations to provide in 2020 and 2025 updated reports on their progress and to revise their individual commitments, hopefully more ambitiously. While this has some of the sense of kicking the can down the road, at least the road has a limit, albeit an unenforceable one.
Clearly not one single country had the courage to “keep it in the ground,” which was the agreement that was really needed. To the extent that we continue to extract carbon-based fuels from the ground and to use other carbon-based fuels and related technologies to move them around and process them, is the extent to which this problem is never going away.
My biggest disappointment, other than the voluntary nature of all the commitments, is that investment in clean energy technology in developing nations was all but ignored. For me, that is the inflection point around which serious gains can be made. I place more faith in technological innovation than I do in government policy. But it will take government policy and investment to trigger that innovation.
Bottom line: as I frequently suggest, it’s going to take non-governmental action of a spiritual nature (in the broadest sense of that word) to stave off the worst possible effects of climate change. A tipping point of “enlightened” (again, in the broadest sense) individuals working together can bring to bear appropriate intellectual, emotional and spiritual approaches. I remain goofily optimistic that this can and will happen but I don’t think we yet own a clear understanding of how much effort will be involved.