The 12 days that will decide Earth's future
A guide to the COP21 climate talks
Undaunted by terrorism, 40,000 diplomats, experts and advocates, including more than 135 world leaders, are set to meet in Paris beginning Nov. 30 for a major U.N. Climate Summit. The goal is a new global climate treaty, involving all nations, that would enter force in the year 2020 and help the world avoid the worst consequences of manmade global warming. During previous U.N. climate negotiations, world leaders agreed to limit global warming to at or below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by the year 2100, determining that any warming beyond that would set in motion dangerous and potentially unstoppable climate impacts, from melting ice sheets to extreme and deadly heat waves.We are already halfway to that target and closing in fast.The meeting is widely viewed as the last chance for the world to limit global warming to the temperature target.
Since that goal was set, studies have shown that dangerous climate impacts may already be occurring. This is despite the fact that global average temperatures have only warmed by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit.For some countries, this temperature target is more than an abstract number. Small island nations like the Marshall Islands and Kiribati view the summit, and the goals that will be adopted there, as the best way to ensure their survival from rising sea levels.In more than two decades of climate diplomacy — there’s a reason this meeting is called “COP21,” there have already been 20 climate negotiations since 1992 — there has never been as much optimism going into a crucial round of talks as there is now. This is due to several factors: increased manifestations of global warming in extreme weather events around the world, which has led to greater public awareness; explosive growth and plunging costs of producing renewable energy, particularly solar power; and an increasingly effective social movement that is pressuring governments to act.
One reason for optimism is that the North/South schism that has derailed many similar gatherings, including a deflating summit in Copenhagen in 2009, has faded after two major agreements were struck between the U.S. and China to address emissions of global warming pollutants and expand renewable energy usage. These countries are the top two emitters in the world.There’s also the recognition that we’re running out of time to contain global warming. The climate is racing past thresholds that scientists thought would take far longer to cross. This year will be the planet’s hottest on record, and the first to eclipse 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial temperatures. In addition, we have crossed into an era with the highest amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for all of human history, and likely long before that, with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air slipping inexorably past the 400 parts per million threshold. It is unlikely to dip below this during our lifetimes.The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high, more than 800,000 years ago, there was very little ice on Earth and sea levels were about 100 feet higher than they are today.
But this time around may be different. This summit just might work when so many others failed. This is our guide to why.
World leaders hope to emerge from the Paris Climate Summit with a new climate agreement in hand that would spell out each country’s commitments for reducing global warming pollutants, starting in the year 2020. Unlike the unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol, the new agreement will take a bottom-up approach to climate policy-making. Instead of having the U.N. prescribe cuts for particular nations, the new treaty design allows countries to decide for themselves what they are willing and capable of doing, and adding their contribution to the agreement. Call it the potluck approach to climate change policymaking, since every country is bringing its own dish to the table, in the form of a national pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions and expand renewable energy investments, among other policies. Like at any potluck, there will be some attendees who bring a more ambitious dish to the party compared to others.
The U.S. and China, for example, are two countries that will strut into Paris having already made game-changing climate pledges. Whereas others, like Russia, are viewed as having proposed little departure from business as usual.The key question, though, is whether at the end of the day each country’s commitments will add up to the emissions reductions scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous climate change impacts.“I think it is highly likely that this COP will produce more progress than the previous 20 combined,” said Carl Pope, former Sierra Club president and current adviser to Michael Bloomberg, the U.N. special envoy for cities and climate change. “The bottom-up approach is working much better than the top down approach,” Pope told Mashable.
To-date, 161 countries have submitted their climate pledges, which are technically known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs. A number of studies have shown that, when added together, the INDCs would not limit global warming to the 2-degree target.A U.N. report analyzing 119 separate emissions reduction pledges from 146 countries showed that, if implemented to their fullest extent, the emissions cuts would limit the forecast temperature rise to between 2.7 to 3.7 degrees Celsius, or about 4.8 degrees to 6.6 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100.Since it’s unlikely that countries will decide in Paris that they will go further than their INDCs have stated, it will be up to the negotiators to design a climate agreement that provides for regular review periods and specific timeframes for when to enact more strict emissions limits.
The past several years have seen a huge ramp up in climate activities and ambitions among businesses, states, regions and cities. Dozens of mayors as well as CEOs from around the world will be present to make their voices heard during the summit.These actions raise the stakes for Paris, and result in even more momentum and support for national leaders to take action. “You know, in climate change, we talk a lot about tipping points,” said Andrew Steer, the CEO of the World Resources Institute. “We tend to think about bad tipping points. But, of course, this conference is about potentially good tipping points.”For Steer, a successful outcome in Paris could create ripple effects that reverberate throughout global markets, all the way down to the local level. “Done right, this will set in train a set of policies and actions that would take us across a number of these positive tipping points in a way we design our cities, in the way we consume, in the way we deliver electricity, in the way we work and how we go to work.”“And all the evidence is that that economy will be better and the quality of life will be better,” Steer said. “And so the stakes are exceedingly high for this.”