The global climate agenda: the European way to Paris COP21
di Davide Triacca
Within the complexity of climate negotiations, which is intrinsically linked to the requirement that the governments of the world respond to the threat of climate change in unison, there are some certainties worth reemphasising. The first – and most well-known – of these is the commitment to capping the maximum increase of the world’s average temperature at two degrees centigrade (in comparison with pre-industrial levels, or at just 1.4 degrees centigrade in comparison with current temperatures) in order to prevent dangerous human interferences with the climate system of the planet. An increase in excess of these parameters would jeopardise fundamental elements that the developed West takes “for granted”, such as the production of food or the normal shape of our coastlines. Over the last 150 years, human activities have produced considerably more greenhouse-gas emissions (with carbon dioxide accounting for the lion’s share of these) than were generated in the rest of our planet’s history.
This is another certainty. As a consequence, the current atmospheric concentrations of these gases are 30% higher than they have been at any time over the last 800,000 years. Between 1992 (the year of the Rio Summit) and now, global emissions have increased by over 60%, a worrying figure when we consider that the summit’s objective was to organise an effective global response to the greenhouse effect. In order to keep global warming under the critical threshold of two degrees centigrade, the IPCC (the foremost international group of experts on climate change, founded in 1988 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007) calculates that the atmosphere can “bear” a maximum of 790 Gigatonnes of CO2, 515 of which (65%) have already been emitted. Therefore, man can emit a further 275 gigatonnes before the shared objective of 2°C is rendered irrelevant. And at the current emissions rate of nearly 10 Gigatonnes per year, this leaves us with a truly limited timescale for action. Yet although taking action is a necessity and our duty, the manner in which we do so is by no means a given. Copenhagen 2009 showed how international mobilisation and media attention are necessary but insufficient elements to ensuring successful negotiations. Davide Triacca Scientific Coordinator Centre for a Sustainable Future I.
The global climate agenda: the European way to Paris COP21 2 From this perspective, Paris has an added element of both hope and concrete risk: the decision to abandon the logic of forced, artificial parity between all 192 signatories to the Rio Convention.
Full text The global climate agenda: the European way to Paris COP21
