After two weeks of negotiations almost 200 countries agreed on a framework for implementation of the Paris climate agreement
Weary climate negotiators limped across the finish line Saturday after days of round-the-clock talks, striking a deal that keeps the world moving forward with plans to curb carbon emissions. But the agreement fell well short of the breakthrough that scientists – and many of the conference’s own participants – say is needed to avoid the cataclysmic impacts of a warming planet.
The deal struck on Saturday at a global conference in the heart of Polish coal country, where some 25,000 delegates had gathered, adds legal flesh to the bones of the 2015 Paris agreement, setting the rules of the road for how nearly 200 countries cut their production of greenhouse gases and monitor each other’s progress.
The agreement also prods countries to step up their ambition in fighting climate change, a recognition of the fact that the world’s efforts have not gone nearly far enough. But, like the landmark 2015 agreement in Paris, it does not bind countries to hit their targets. And observers questioned whether it was sufficient given the extraordinary stakes.
“We are driven by our sense of humanity and commitment to the well being of the earth that sustains us and those generations that will replace us,” Michał Kurtyka, the Polish environmental official who provided over the two-week international summit, said late Saturday as the marathon talks drew to a close.
Kurtyka noted the difficulty of finding global consensus on issues so technical and, in many ways, politically fraught. “Under thee circumstances, every single step forward is a big achievement,” he said. “And through this package, you have made 1,000 little steps forward together.”
But even as he spoke, the outcome raised immediate questions about whether those steps were large enough.
“In the climate emergency we’re in, slow success is no success,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “In an emergency, if the ambulance doesn’t get you to the hospital in time, you die. If the firetruck doesn’t get to your house in time, it burns down.”
Negotiators said the agreement was the best that could have been expected given the limited agenda for the talks and the need for a global consensus. Virtually every nation on Earth was represented at Katowice, ranging from small island countries that threaten to be swallowed by rising seas – and that pushed for a crisis-level response – to the United States, which has said it plans to withdraw from the Paris process.
The United States, the world’s largest economy and its second-largest polluter, remains in the agreement until at least 2020.
