In Paris, Fossil Fuels Got Their Expiration Date

Paris was different.

Most previous climate change summits have tended to follow the same dreary pattern. Expectations are set low, yet negotiators still somehow fail to meet them. Progress is incremental at best. Decisions thought to be essential are deferred; differences that need to be bridged are obscured. Urgency is defeated, cynicism is validated. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But in Paris, diplomats secured a far more ambitious outcome than anyone could reasonably have anticipated coming in. In fact, the Paris Agreement is the most ambitious climate agreement that the world has ever seen, and is rightly being hailed as a potential turning point in humanity’s fight to tackle the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement is ambitious in two key respects. First, it is politically transformational, in that it transcends the rigid political fault lines between the developed and developing world that have long bedeviled previous attempts to reach a strong climate agreement. Instead, it establishes a common framework for global cooperation that includes commitments from nearly all countries. All countries are now under the same universal legal regime, and are expected to move forward based on their “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.” Rather than differentiating responsibility by fixed categorization, the Agreement expects all countries to take action, and to have that action reviewed, according to an evolving spectrum of capabilities and circumstances.

The Agreement is also scientifically ambitious, in that it establishes long term goals that are consistent with what scientists tell us is necessary to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate disruption. In perhaps the most surprising outcome of the conference, the Agreement sets a temperature target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C” To meet this target, it seeks to peak global emissions as soon as possible, and to ensure that man-made emissions are brought into balance with the absorptive capacity of forests and oceans “in the second half of the century.”

This will require countries to begin to limit and reduce their fossil fuel use immediately, and to eliminate it entirely in just over a half century. Put simply, countries have agreed nothing less than an expiration date on the fossil fuel era.

These are extremely demanding goals that can only be realized through sustained effort, technological innovation, and uncommon political determination. No one believes that the initial pledges countries brought with them to Paris are adequate to the task. In fact, scientists estimate that they will bring us only halfway to the 2°C goal, and still further from the 1.5°C goal.

Recognizing that efforts must be significantly scaled up over time to meet their shared objectives, countries agreed to a process of periodic review and enhanced action. Beginning in 2018 and every five years thereafter, countries will take stock of their collective efforts and their progress toward meeting the world’s new goals. Taking these reviews into account, countries will then submit their proposed contributions.

Two other elements of the Agreement will also help increase action over time. First, the Agreement adopts a common transparency and oversight regime that will help ensure that countries actually follow through on their commitments, and will help them to get back on track if they fall short. Second, the Agreement recognizes that while developing countries can do a lot to reduce their emissions on their own, many can do much more with support. Therefore, developed countries have pledged to increase financial support, technological assistance and capacity building. Crucially, other high-income countries that have not traditionally provided climate support, but have the resources to do so, are also expected to contribute.

To their great credit, then, the French have brokered an agreement that is at once broader and more far reaching than anything that has come before it. By encouraging all countries to contribute what they can to the common effort, the Agreement provides a basis for a set of collective goals that are more ambitious than would otherwise have been possible. Of course, whether countries will in fact deliver their best efforts remains to be seen.

Putting all countries into a common framework facilitates ambition in another way that is often overlooked. Previously, the main rift in global climate politics was between developed and developing countries. Each could justify a lack of action on the basis of the inaction of the other.

But this fault line between countries has obscured the more important battle taking place within countries. The main impediment to stronger climate action and building clean energy economies has always been those who profit under the old ways—mainly the coal industry, other fossil fuel interests, and the politicians who serve them.

With the divide between developed and developing countries receding, attention should now be focused on the real blockers—in all countries—in ways that will strengthen civil society, far-sighted decision-makers, and progressive business leaders who are working to put the policies and investment strategies in place to unleash the clean energy revolution. In the United States, you can be sure that Sierra Club will continue to do our best to overcome these fossilized divides whenever and wherever we encounter them.


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