After two decades of failed efforts to forge a global agreement on climate change, the world is barely at the starting line when it comes to curbing emissions of the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the planet. President Obama candidly acknowledged that history on the opening day of the Paris summit Monday: “One of the enemies that we’ll be fighting at this conference is cynicism, the notion we can’t do anything about climate change.”
Still, there is hope for an agreement at this summit, because 184 nations have submitted greenhouse gas emissions-reduction plans, accounting for 98.4 percent of emissions, according to the tracking organization Carbon Brief. The International Energy Agency says there is a clear energy transition underway, with renewable energy projected to produce 50 percent of electricity in Europe by 2050, and between 25 and 30 percent in the United States, China, India, and Japan.
There is also hope because the United States, the world’s second-leading emitter, goes into the talks with far more credibility than at past summits. Obama, despite continued opposition from congressional Republicans and fossil-fuel Democrats, has deftly used the Environmental Protection Agency to launch unprecedented fuel-efficiency, renewable-energy, and emissions-cutting programs. American emissions have actually ticked downward since 2005. His negotiation of a joint emissions-reduction pledge with China is widely thought to be the crucial turning point that brought many other nations to the table with their own cuts.
The challenge, according to analysis by the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, and other scientists, is that the proposed national cuts may still not add up to enough to keep the forecasted planetary temperature rise below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius — the level that scientists believe is necessary to prevent the worst projected effects. One recent study, by the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research, said the emissions pledges of the United States, China, and the European Union, however ambitious they might seem, leave little room for any other nations to emit anything at all if the world as a whole is to limit the increase to 2 degrees.
Advertisement
And the fissures among nations remain the biggest potential stumbling block. Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that any agreement “should not deny the legitimate needs of developing countries to reduce poverty and improve their people’s living standards.” Translated, that means that for China and other developing nations to embrace a global accord, the world must accept either continued coal burning in developing nations in the short term, or provide enough aid and technical assistance to speed the transition into renewables.
Advertisement
But as serious as the divisions remain, the Paris summit opens with an unprecedented common sense of urgency. No country is denying its responsibility to deal with climate change. The question has finally become how, not whether, all countries can do their part. If the summit leads every nation to step up to the challenge of climate change with renewed vigor, it will be a success.