PARIS — After more than two decades of negotiations, diplomats finally succeeded in passing a sweeping global climate change accord that applies to both developed and developing nations alike. The agreement was approved by consensus vote on Saturday evening, a day after the talks were scheduled to wrap up.
The deal marks a historic turning point in the world's effort to address global warming, and a stark turnaround from the last major climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when a deal fell apart amid acrimony between industrialized and developing nations and many doubted the viability of the U.N.-led climate negotiating process.
In effect, the new agreement rewrites the architecture of global climate change policymaking to reflect how geopolitical realities have changed since the first climate agreement was struck in 1992. Since that year, the economies and emissions of South Korea, China, India, Brazil and other nations have grown dramatically, and this agreement goes a long way toward placing requirements on all nations to act on global warming.
While there were sticking points to be overcome between the U.S. and emerging powers such as China and India, among other squabbles, the U.N. Climate Summit in Paris, also known as COP21, had none of the brinksmanship and deadlocks present at so many of the similar climate meetings before it.
This time, negotiators had buy-in from their nations' leaders — 150 of whom showed up at the start of the talks to profess their hopes of a deal, as well as a growing social movement urging action at the city, state and local level, and a burgeoning clean energy industry to provide wind at their backs, pushing them to act.
All these factors lubricated the diplomatic gears, making a new agreement possible.
The agreement sets a target of holding global warming to "well below 2 degrees Celsius," and "to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels." The inclusion of the 1.5-degree target is a huge win for small island states and other nations that are vulnerable to climate change impacts, particularly sea level rise.
In reality, it is highly unlikely the world will hold warming to the 1.5-degree target, let alone the 2-degree target, based on emissions-to-date and planned emissions cuts.
— Katharina Davis (@KDavisClimate) December 12, 2015
This year will mark the hottest year on record, and the first year that global average temperatures reached 1-degree Celsius above the preindustrial average, meaning that we're already creeping closer to what some climate scientists refer to as climate change "guard rails."
The final agreement calls for more emissions cuts to be put on the table prior to the year 2020, which is when this agreement would go into effect.
Beyond that, countries would be obligated to communicate, maintain and implement their emissions reduction targets every five years, starting in 2023. This so-called "ratchet mechanism" would allow for the agreement to grow more stringent over time.
The Paris agreement adopts a novel system in which each country puts forward its own non-binding emissions reduction pledges and climate aid packages, and various measures, none of which have been tested before, are put in place to ensure the pledges are being translated into action. This architecture is new for an international environmental agreement, and amounts to a repudiation of the top-down path pursued for many years that led to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 1997.
"This agreement is far more than a lowest common denominator agreement," said Thomas Spencer, director of the climate program, at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris.
Parts of the agreement are considered to be legally-binding, however the emissions targets countries set are not part of that binding legal framework. The main reason for that is that the Obama administration did not want to be forced to submit the agreement to the Senate for consideration as a treaty, since the Republican-led chamber would almost certainly defeat it.
One ironic aspect of the agreement is that the temperature goals it sets are more ambitious than any climate treaty to date, yet according to many scientists, these goals are completely at odds with the carbon emissions cuts that countries have so far put forward in the same agreement.
In fact, the pledges associated with this agreement would allow global greenhouse gas emissions to increase on the order of about 1% per year through 2030, according to Glen Peters, a a senior researcher at Norway's Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO).
Based on the emissions pledges, which are also known as Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions, or INDCs, the world is in for around 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming through 2100.
“Emissions must go to zero or close to it,” Peters told Mashable in an interview. “Hopefully we’re in a period of lower growth… but still we’re expecting the [emissions] growth to continue.”
"The draft Paris agreement puts us on track for a planet three degrees hotter than today. This would be a disaster," said Asad Rehman, international spokesman for Friends of the Earth, in a statement.
“This is not about what is achievable, it is about what needs to be done. Even at 1.5 degrees, scientific consensus tells us very many of us will not be safe," said Giza Gaspar Martins, an Angolan diplomat who is the chair of the Least Developed Countries Group at the talks, in a statement.
The deal also mandates the developed nations scale up their financing for climate adaptation and mitigation efforts in the developing world, with $100 billion per year provided as a floor for such financing. Separate five-year reviews would take place for these finance commitments, with the commitments growing more ambitious over time.
The accord does not go nearly as far toward compensating countries for losses and damage due to global warming impacts, as the U.S. strenuously resisted attempts to add language on the legal liability of historical emitters of the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere today.
While the U.S. is the second-largest emitter today, it is the top emitter from a historical standpoint.
However, developing nations won a significant victory by having a loss and damage section in the agreement text. The section directs countries to create a process to address the losses and damage the comes from unavoidable climate impacts that can't be adapted to. An accompanying decision that accompanies the agreement, would exclude liability or compensation for such damages.
“I think it’s an important step forward on loss and damage," said Heather Coleman, climate change policy manager for Oxfam, in an interview with Mashable.
Oxfam has calculated that developing countries could face climate adaptation costs of up to $800 billion a year by 2050.
The beginning of the end for fossil fuels
The deal alone will not solve global warming, and it in fact recognizes that hazardous impacts of global warming are already occurring, from sea level rise to increasingly prevalent and intense heat waves. The deal obligates developed nations, which caused much of present-day warming, to assist developing countries hit hard by warming to adapt to such impacts.
— Ségolène Royal (@RoyalSegolene) December 12, 2015
However, the most important part of the agreement is that it seeks to send a clear signal to global markets that there needs to be an unprecedented shift in investments from the fossil fuel industry to renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar power, as well as technologies that have not even been invented yet.
By sending such a message, it is hoped that faster emissions cuts could be achieved compared to what countries are currently planning.
"Given the global reach of the agreement and the follow-up mechanisms and transparency behind it, I’m confident we could see trillions of dollars –- not just billions –- pouring into the low-carbon economy worldwide every year," said Mindy Lubber, president of the group Ceres that advocates for sustainability in the private sector. "It gives me hope that by unleashing capital and innovation worldwide we truly have a chance to limit catastrophic climate warming,” she said in a statement.
The long-term goal of the agreement is to aim for a transition away from fossil fuels toward the end of the century. However, the goal language was watered down somewhat from previous versions of the draft text, which had quantitative targets for emissions cuts.
The language in the approved agreement states that global emissions should peak "as soon as possible," with rapid emissions reductions thereafter. The goal in the second half of the century is for what may be interpreted as zero net emissions, though the wording is somewhat vague. No peak year is mandated in the agreement.
— JPascal van Ypersele (@JPvanYpersele) December 12, 2015
The agreement states that parties should "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century..."
It is hoped that this long-term goal will send a signal to markets that money should be shifted away from fossil fuels and toward clean sources of energy, like wind, solar and other emerging technologies.
“Every government seems now to recognize that the fossil fuel era must end and soon. But the power of the fossil fuel industry is reflected in the text, which drags out the transition so far that endless climate damage will be done," said Bill McKibben, journalist and co-founder of the climate activist group 350.org. "Since pace is the crucial question now, activists must redouble our efforts to weaken that industry. This didn’t save the planet but it may have saved the chance of saving the planet,” he said in a statement.