{"id":830,"date":"2015-12-22T16:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T15:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.actvism.org\/?p=830"},"modified":"2020-11-06T17:49:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T16:49:00","slug":"warum-das-pariser-klimagipfel-abkommen-kaum-das-papier-wert-ist-auf-dem-es-gedruckt-wurde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.actvism.org\/en\/latest\/warum-das-pariser-klimagipfel-abkommen-kaum-das-papier-wert-ist-auf-dem-es-gedruckt-wurde\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: \u2018Worse Than Copenhagen\u2019: Why The Paris Climate Accord Is Scarcely Worth The Paper That It\u2019s Written On"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On December 12, 2015, world leaders finally struck a global climate accord<\/a> in Paris, France. The announcement of the accord was accompanied by the predictable orgy of self-congratulation: world leaders breathlessly declared their agreement to be \u201chistoric\u201d and \u201cambitious,\u201d<\/a> and a \u201cturning point for the world.\u201d<\/a> The corporate press dutifully regurgitated the superlatives gushing from the mouths of heads of state and diplomats. All the while, coalitions of big business showered praise on the outcom<\/a>e \u2013 a sure sign that corporate interests had prevailed over the urgent needs of humanity.<\/p>\n

There was, however, one little problem: climate scientists weren\u2019t buying the hype. On the penultimate day of the 21st<\/sup> session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21), five of the world\u2019s leading climate scientists delivered to a standing room-only press conference their blunt assessment of the deal that was about to emerge from COP21. Professor Kevin Anderson<\/a>, the chair of Energy and Climate Change at the universities of Manchester and East Anglia, and the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Center of Climate Change Research, was particularly withering in his criticism of the deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The aspiration and the rhetoric will not deliver reductions in carbon dioxide emissions\u2026”<\/p>\n

I would view the current text as weaker than that that came out of Copenhagen<\/em>. It is not consistent with science, which the Copenhagen agreement had directly written into it. In addition, the Copenhagen agreement also included aviation and shipping, two sectors that collectively combined are similar to the emissions from the U.K. and Germany. These are now exempt from the current text, and they are growing very rapidly indeed. I do not think that peaking emissions \u2018as soon as possible\u2019 is scientifically robust, sufficiently robust, and there is no reference to the levels of those peaks. There is no reference to fossil fuels<\/strong> in the document, despite the fact that at 1.5 to 2C, we really need to be keeping around about 90% of all current reserves in the ground.<\/em> The language of neutrality masks the ruse that we have developed, or the assumptions that we have, that we are about to suck very large quantities of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the future, and that means that we do not have to have such significant reductions in the near term\u2026<\/p>\n

To the poor, climatically vulnerable non-white, typically non-white, living in the southern hemisphere, the current text is somewhere between dangerous and deadly.<\/em> There is a slight risk that the document, as it is, is appeasement to our desire to continue to use fossil fuels, to a business-as-usual agenda rather than something that is perhaps more of a progressive agenda for humanity.”<\/p>\n

From my lawyer\u2019s perspective, the Paris accord<\/a> is precisely what Professor Anderson described it to be: \u201caspiration and rhetoric<\/em>.\u201d In particular, much has been made of the fact that the agreement refers to the 1.5C limit, which the scientific community considers essential to the survival of low-lying island nations and coastal regions that could well succumb to rising sea levels at higher temperatures.<\/p>\n

Yet what precisely does the Paris accord say about the temperature limit? The temperature limit appears in Article 2 of the accord, but that article simply identifies the purposes<\/em> of the agreement. The purposes of any accord inform the interpretation of the accord\u2019s other parts, but an interpretive principle is not the same as a hard legal obligation. In particular, nowhere in the Paris accord are states mandated to take all steps necessary to ensure that the temperature limit is not breached. Moreover, the upper boundary established by Article 2 is not 1.5C, but \u201cwell below 2C\u201d — what does \u201cwell below\u201d mean? States are merely called upon to \u201cpursue efforts\u201d to limit the increase to 1.5C, but do decades of governmental inaction give us any cause to believe that such efforts will be vigorously pursued, even though the Paris accord imposes no penalty whatsoever for failure to pursue them?<\/p>\n

The balance of the Paris accord is rife with restrained exhortations to do something, anything, about the existential climate change threat. Article 4 states that \u201call Parties should strive<\/em> to formulate and communicate long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies\u2026\u201d Article 5 states that \u201cParties should<\/em> take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate<\/em>, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases\u2026\u201d Similarly, Article 11 declares that \u201ccapacity-building under this Agreement should<\/em> enhance the capacity and ability of developing country Parties\u2026 to take effective climate change action\u2026, and should<\/em> facilitate technology development, dissemination and deployment, access to climate finance, relevant aspects of education, training and public awareness, and the transparent, timely and accurate communication of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does anyone seriously believe that politely asking the governments of wealthy nations to protect the most vulnerable peoples from climate catastrophe will ensure their salvation? This is like respectfully requesting that the fossil fuels industry transfer its historical profits to developing nations as reparations \u2013 a not unreasonable request, considering the millions of poor who have been devastated over decades by the industry\u2019s depredations.<\/p>\n

Yet the worst deficiencies of the Paris accord<\/a> consist not in what it says, but in what it does not say.<\/p>\n

For example:<\/p>\n