The Paris climate agreement at a glance

A handy infographic with the key points.

Emil Jeyaratnam | Dec 14 2015 | comment

By Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation; James Whitmore, The Conversation; Michael Hopkin, The Conversation, and Wes Mountain, The Conversation

On December 12, 2015 in Paris, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change finally came to a landmark agreement.

Signed by 196 nations, the Paris Agreement is the first comprehensive global treaty to combat climate change, and will follow on from the Kyoto Protocol when it ends in 2020. It will enter into force once it is ratified by at least 55 countries, covering at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are the key points.

Emil Jeyaratnam, Multimedia Editor, The Conversation; James Whitmore, Editor, Environment & Energy, The Conversation; Michael Hopkin, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation, and Wes Mountain, Deputy Multimedia Editor, The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the-paris-climate-agreement-at-a-glance/17343#sthash.KdJKSOI9.dpuf

The headlines today are all about the results of the climate change conference in Paris. The 196 signatories have agreed to keep temperatures well below a 2 degrees centigrade rise.

All of the reporting has focused on the 2 degrees – but where does this figure come from? A very interesting article in The Economist explains its origin: “a hybrid of political need and scientific haze”.

Back in the 1970s, William Nordhaus, a leading environmental economist, suggested that the most reasonable goal was the upper limit of temperatures in the last 100,000 years – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. He said that this was “deeply unsatisfactory” – was it too much? was it too little? -- but it made a good target.

Since then the figure of 2 degrees has taken on “a life of its own”, with more and more scientists, environmental reports, and governments using it as a benchmark. It was finally adopted as an international goal in 2010 at a conference in Mexico. As The Economist notes, a single figure has many flaws but the great advantage of focusing minds.

However, it is a bit unsettling to discover that the centrepiece of climate change activism is a guesstimate. As Bismarck would have remarked: climate change goals are like sausages; it is better not to know how they are made. In our lead story today, Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise is deeply sceptical about whether it will be possible for governments to attain the demanding goals they have set themselves.