Setting aside the perspective of the U.S. for the moment, I would first like to address the pitfalls of the Paris Agreement for achieving its stated aims:
- The Paris Agreement limit won’t protect all countries and locations from the strong negative impacts of climate change. For vulnerable climates close to deserts, such as the Sahel region of Africa, the climate targets don’t go far enough to protect the people living there.
- Countries have so far only voluntarily made pledges (nationally declared contributions) to keep the atmospheric temperature below 2.7-3.0 degrees Celsius, which won’t get us anywhere close to the 1.5 degree Celsius “comfort zone.”
- Rivalries and diplomatic tension makes the “balance of inequalities” portion of the Paris Agreement particularly hard to implement. For instance, the U.S. agreed to voluntarily pay $3 billion dollars under the commitments made by President Obama.
- Efforts to measure, track and monitor GHGs lack standardization and may not live up to the agreement’s stated aim of transparency.
- Not to be understated, the fossil fuel industry and its friends (gas-powered automobiles, fossil-fuel powered utilities, etc.) will likely face consequences as fossil fuels get phased out. However, it’s important to note that this transition doesn’t just result from the Paris Agreement. The price of renewable energy has dropped below the price of fossil fuels, giving developers an incentive to invest in renewable energy projects.
In short, the Paris Agreement might look like a bad deal to some, but it represents significant progress on getting the world to agree to take climate action.
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