The world’s governments have reached a new agreement at the just-concluded international climate talks. The result could advance the fight to mitigate humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow climate change. But activists and scientists say that the negotiations didn’t come anywhere near the significant global overhaul needed to seriously address our warming planet.
The world’s governments have reached a new agreement at the just-concluded international climate talks. The result could advance the fight to mitigate humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow climate change. But activists and scientists say that the negotiations didn’t come anywhere near the significant global overhaul needed to seriously address our warming planet.
The agreement was reached late on Saturday night local time in Katowice, Poland where delegates representing almost 200 countries have convened for the past two weeks. Their goal was to further the objectives set forth by the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels while striving to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. While the Paris Agreement lays out the ambitions and countries made their first pledges toward cooling the planet, the talks in Katowice were intended to provide a more robust framework for the how-to part. They delivered that as something called the Paris Rulebook, but the process wasn’t without drama.
While attendees were moved to a standing ovation with the rulebook’s approval, the agreed-upon rules for mitigating climate change are woefully insufficient for a conference that saw children literally petitioning delegates to consider their future.
