Surveying the Landscape of the Paris Climate Accord

By Zosha Millman | LXBN | October 5, 2016

Yesterday the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted to ratify the Paris climate accord, less than a year after its signature. So what’s on deck for international climate change?

After being negotiated in Paris last December, few expected the agreement would be ratified as quickly as it has been. But it’s just one more sign of the times: Climate change is no longer a push driven from the fringe. Where it took the Kyoto protocol eight years to enter into force, regulators now know there is little luxury for time.

And so climate agreements come together much faster than they once did. With a 30-day period ahead of us before the agreement legally enters into force, now is the time to celebrate—and review what the international community just agreed to.

The legal jargon:

The overall goal of the agreement is to keep the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial levels, as well as pursue efforts to keep it within 1.5 degrees Celsius/2.7 Fahrenheit. Other goals and stipulations include:

• Peaking greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, and achieving a balance between the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.
• $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries by the year 2020, with a commitment to more finance in the future.
• Reviewing progress of the agreement every five years, with countries that have ratified it waiting at least three years before they are permitted to exit.

Those two nations together accounted for 38 percent of global greenhouse emissions, and their approval of the Paris agreement meant the accord—which called for at least 55 parties in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)accounting for at least an estimated 55 percent of total greenhouse emissions worldwide to deposit instruments of ratification or approval—was nearly to its goal. India’s ratification of the deal on Sunday (committing to generating 40 percent of its total electricity from non-fossil fuel-based sources by 2030) pushed parties to 52 percent of the world’s total, and the EU’s vote brings it over the top with 57 percent.To meet that goal will mean different things for different countries: Poland and Italy powered the EU’s negotiations by pledging to cut their carbon output by 40 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2030. The U.S. is aiming to cut emissions by up to 28 percent of its 2005 levels by the year 2025. China promised to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

The science jargon:

Which is great, because like most things climate change related, we needed this agreement yesterday. Many scientists already fear that the goals of the accord are already lost in the sea of greenhouse emissions. As The Washington Post reports, it’s a lot easier to sign a paper agreement than it is to actually live up to the commitment:

Scientific observers broadly agree that the individual pledges made by countries under the Paris agreement are not strong enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Even as countries have moved rapidly to ratify the Paris accord, the window for hitting the agreement’s targets is closing. Or, according to the more pessimistic voices, it could already be closed.

Among those is former NASA scientist James Hansen, who released apaper Tuesday declaring that the world, at 1.3 degrees Celsius above what he terms pre-industrial levels in 2016, is likely already well past any climate safe zone. Hansen believes that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are far too high already and that the planet is as hot as it was in the last interglacial period, over 100,000 years ago. He argues that to stabilize the planet at 1.5 C or 2 degrees C now probably means developing expensive new technologies, which do not exist at scale, to actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

That could mean hundreds of trillions of dollars poured into technology that can help curb the “enormous amounts of CO2 emissions,” according to Hansen. He may be on the more dire end of the climate scientist spectrum, where the more optimistic end hopes the Paris agreement’s review clause will help open the door for changing predictions.

“The agreement follows the pattern of existing domestic environmental laws in recognizing that it may not be a perfect solution, in and of itself, and that the science will continue to evolve,” writes Gary S. Guzy for Global Privacy Policy. “Similar to the Clean Air Act’s five year review provision for fundamental health-based pollutants, the Paris climate agreement acknowledges the need to calibrate future emissions reductions based on new science and will regularly assess the success of country measures in meeting the emissions targets.”

With Canada, Japan, and the remaining countries in the EU (only seven countries have completed their domestic processes so far) expected to sign on soon enough, there’s hope that maybe the Paris accord will be—and remain—strong enough to fight climate change. And now, unto the breach.

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