{"id":6533,"date":"2015-12-14T08:04:03","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T08:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6533"},"modified":"2015-12-14T08:04:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T08:04:03","slug":"promises-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/12\/14\/promises-promises\/","title":{"rendered":"Promises, promises, ..."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A great new deal, or just a fraud and a fake, as Jim <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/dec\/12\/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud\">Hansen<\/a> says? \u00a0\u00a0As I've noted already in a post-COP21 script to an earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=6527&amp;action=edit\">post<\/a>, the new target of 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial levels is more political than scientific. \u00a0And it's not just Hansen who's gloomy; here's\u00a0George Monbiot:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\"Progressive as the outcome is by comparison to all that has gone before, it leaves us with an almost comically lopsided agreement. \u00a0While negotiations on almost all other global hazards seek to address both ends of the problem, the UN climate process has focused entirely on the consumption of fossil fuels, while ignoring their production.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But maybe all that's a bit overstated. \u00a0Is this really a triumph for the oil and coal cartels \u2013 another triumph, that is \u2013 they certainly tried hard to make it so. \u00a0Or does it add weight to the notion that they are all on borrowed time?<\/p>\n<p>Paris was a success. \u00a0I watched a series of French politicians saying \u00a0\u2013 prior to its unveiling \u2013 how great the deal was, without ever saying what the deal actually was: fittingly, what was something of an\u00a0anticlimax came later. \u00a0But in fairness to the drive and determination of the French, it's hard to see how there could ever have been a <em>London Agreement<\/em> on all this \u2013 we've just not that needy, or perhaps caring. \u00a0Anyway: France 1 \u2013 0 Denmark.<\/p>\n<p>So what about the deal? \u00a0If you were teaching about this tomorrow, what would you want to get across? \u00a0For me, \u00a0these are the key points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is clearly not nothing, and is more than many feared. \u00a0It\u00a0marks a global political recognition of the risks of climate change. \u00a0And yet, it doesn't quite feel like something \u2013 it's more like an indicator of something than the real thing. \u00a0What countries now <em>do<\/em> will be that something, and we will\u00a0have to wait for a few\u00a0years to see how substantive it really is.<\/li>\n<li>On the positive side, there is an\u00a0explicit and ambitious goal of having as much greenhouse gas coming out of the atmosphere as going into it in the second half of this century. \u00a0On the negative, the world is nearly 1\u00b0C warmer than it was in the 18th century, and existing national pledges on climate action are more in line with a warming of 3\u00b0C than 1.5\u00b0C.<\/li>\n<li>The agreement requires countries to act, but it says nothing concrete about what or how much anyone has to do. \u00a0Whilst the UN cannot mandate countries to act in specific ways, their citizens can \u2013 time for some pressure, perhaps; time for a plan.<\/li>\n<li>The Paris agreement requires $100bn a year to move from economically-developed countries to developing countries by 2020, with the amount\u00a0to be reviewed\u00a0in 2025. \u00a0This obligation also bears (morally, at least) on rich developing countries as well: India, China, etc. \u00a0The Economist noted that\u00a0it was\u00a0that all nations are to make contributions on an increasingly equal basis that\u00a0justified Hollande\u2019s terming\u00a0the agreement 'universal'.<\/li>\n<li>That said, it remains to be seen how well all that money will be spent, and I cannot be the only one to worry that some of this will be squandered or sequested in personal bank accounts.<\/li>\n<li>The Paris Agreement embodies\u00a0an economic transition away from the age of fossil fuels. \u00a0Inevitably, this will be more drawn out that most of us would wish \u2013 or the Earth needs\u00a0\u2013 but maybe this morning, as the Economist also noted, the the idea of investing in coal and oil\u00a0will seem more risky than it did yesterday.<\/li>\n<li>It is\u00a0real concern about the climate, public opinion, and wide-ranging international pressure that has got us this far, and it\u00a0similar bottom-up processes, rather than unenforceable UN mandates, that will drive up the level of action in decades to come. \u00a0As I said, time for some action; time for some pressure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I've just read through all this again, and it makes me sound more\u00a0positive than I intended\u00a0to be. \u00a0It would be nice to think that is justified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great new deal, or just a fraud and a fake, as Jim Hansen says? \u00a0\u00a0As I've noted already in a post-COP21 script to an earlier post, the new target of 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial levels is more political than scientific....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}