LATE this month, the curtain rises on a in Paris aimed at mitigating the prospect of damaging climate change. Over the past year, governments have been making pledges about how they will cut emissions, and one of the main outcomes from Paris will be a new agreement that codifies all those national efforts into international law.
Critics are already sounding alarms that the outcome will be too little and too late. Even if all the individual pledges are met, the planet will keep on warming 鈥� almost certainly past the internationally agreed threshold of acceptable risk, 2 掳C above pre-industrial temperatures.
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But these critics miss the point. What鈥檚 new about Paris isn鈥檛 that it will cap the rise at 2 掳C. That has not been feasible for years; emissions of warming gases have been rising steeply since 1990 when the search for a deal really began. No, Paris matters because it is likely to set a foundation for governments to coordinate policies on emissions while also helping countries adapt to the big climate changes in store.
The Paris pledges already put the world on track for a lot less warming than some feared a few years ago. And governments in richer countries are on track to honour a commitment to free up, by 2020, about to help the poorest countries.
Much of this success comes from the system of individual national pledges. It has given countries flexibility to focus their obligations on areas where they are willing and able to act. Most emissions growth is in developing and emerging economies, which are wary of rigid, binding controls. These nations are more comfortable with a flexible system and, as a result, they have engaged more fully with international efforts.
Despite this optimism, it is still possible that diplomats will grab defeat from the jaws of victory. The biggest threats to securing a deal don鈥檛 come from countries that want to water it down 鈥� instead they come from countries frustrated that the world鈥檚 top emitters haven鈥檛 done enough.
Such nations are already being damaged by climate change and rightly argue that they shouldn鈥檛 bear the costs. They have a long list of impractical demands for more money and even steeper cuts in emissions in richer nations, plus such as 1 or 1.5 掳C.
Deep greens will call Paris a failure. But it could do more to establish practical mechanisms for cooperation than any other deal since the early 1990s. It would, of course, have been better for this to have happened long ago. But better late than never.
(Image: Andrzej Krauze)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧aris can cut it鈥�
