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Planting Seeds So Something Bigger Might Emerge: The Paris Agreement and the Fight Against Climate Change

2016; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08854300.2016.1183992

1745-2635

Kevin Anderson, Joseph Nevins,

Climate Change Policy and Economics

FlyingLess: In a piece that you wrote and that was published in Nature, you assert that the Paris climate agreement constitutes "a genuine triumph of international diplomacy," while at the same time arguing that it "risks being total fantasy." 2 Why do you say this?Kevin Anderson: The triumph of Paris lies in the international diplomacy that brought together all the leaders of the world's countries.These leaders sang from the same hymn sheet for the first time and said that climate change is important, and, in doing so, pulled the rug from underneath the climate change skeptics.Ultimately, and despite their huge resource base, the skeptics have been unable to delegitimize the basic science of climate change.We have to look at this objectively and acknowledge that, in this respect at least, the Paris Agreement is a huge triumph and a real credit to how the French managed the whole process.Another triumph is that we have gone further than just targets -I don't like the target framing anyway, as it suggests something that we merely aim for and that we may well miss; instead we now have obligations.These obligations are to stay well below a 2-degrees Celsius temperature increase over pre-industrial levels and to strive for 1.5 degrees. 3 With these clear obligations we have something tangible