 I'm Salvatore Bobonis and today's lecture is the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In December 2015, the great and good of the world met in Paris, France to draft a new framework for addressing global warming. They agreed to hold the increasing global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To do this, each country will set its own non-binding greenhouse gas emissions target. As of May 2016, only a collection of small island states had bothered to ratify the agreement. The COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Paris, France in November 30th through December 12th, 2015. The meetings a follow-up to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The COP COP refers to the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention, and the 21 refers to the fact that this is the 21st Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Framework Convention. In 1997, the parties to the Convention had agreed the Kyoto Protocol. The Convention itself was just an agreement to do something about climate change, much like the Vienna Convention had been an agreement to do something about the ozone hole. Just as in fighting the ozone hole, the Montreal Protocol was later established to implement the treaty. In the same way, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 was there to implement the 1992 Convention on Climate Change. Unfortunately, the Kyoto Protocol only set targets for countries in monitoring, but with no real enforcement mechanism or funding. The Kyoto Protocol was extended in 2012 to extend commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through 2020, but once again, there are no penalties for countries that don't meet their commitments. Poor countries have no commitment at all except to do their best in a vague way, and there's no funding to help poor countries meet the goal of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The Paris Agreement, in theory, is intended to provide a continuing framework for extending targets beyond 2030, making the Kyoto Protocol in essence permanent, and not only permanent, but also more ambitious countries were expected to set much more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement than they had set under the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, victory, mission accomplished, agreement declared, and everybody went home. The avowed goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Now, levels of average temperatures have already risen 1°C above pre-industrial levels, so it's not clear how much below 2°C it's possible to keep the temperature increase when temperatures have already gone up by 1°C. Nonetheless, the countries of the world will supposedly meet this goal by first setting their own individual goals for greenhouse gas reductions. That is, there's no agreed global greenhouse gas reduction goal. Each country will simply set its own goal. And second, each country will monitor and enforce its own performance relative to its own goals. So there's no global enforcement. There's merely each country making itself meet its moral commitments made in Paris. Now, even these modest commitments only take effect if the agreement is ratified. It will enter into force when 55 countries that produce at least 55% of global emissions ratify it. That's only realistically possible if both the US and China ratify the agreement. The US and China together make up something like 40% of global emissions. Without the US and China, it would be almost impossible to have the agreement come into force. Both have pledged to ratify the agreement. Both have signed the agreement, but that doesn't mean that it will happen. The chance that the United States Congress will actually ratify the agreement, well, most servers would agree is close to zero, and it's likely that if the United States does not ratify the agreement, China will refuse to ratify an agreement that does not include the United States. But we'll have to see countries have until April 2017 to ratify. In theory, there might be a $100 billion annual fund to help poor countries adjust to climate change. This has been discussed and mooted, and the numbers have been put out in the media that poor countries would receive $100 billion a year in aid to adjust to lower greenhouse gas emissions. But there's no actual agreement to make any such massive transfers. The Paris Agreement does say that there will be a framework for transfers of funds to poor countries, but it doesn't specify any actual amount or any date by which an amount will be set. The widely accepted view is that the Paris Agreement simply will not reach its goals. The most widely cited estimate is that if countries do nothing about global warming, the increase in temperature by the end of this century will be 4.5 degrees Celsius. And as I repeatedly remind people, the world won't end in the year 2100 at the end of this century. So if global warming is 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, it might be another 5 degrees Celsius by the year 2200, another 10 degrees Celsius by the year 2300. We really have no idea what happens if the earth continues to warm due to continued greenhouse gas emissions. Now, estimates are that if countries follow through on their current avowed policies, there will still be a 3.6 degrees Celsius rise in global warming. And again, the consensus view is that even if countries meet the pledges that they made in Paris, they still won't meet the Paris goal of keeping global warming quote-unquote well under 2 degrees Celsius. So most of the expert advice is that it's almost inconceivable that the world will avoid catastrophic runaway global warming. Of course, if one takes the view that the only real goal of the agreement was to have the agreement, mission accomplished. As the participants themselves said, quote, the Paris agreement confirms the irreversible transition to a low-carbon, safer, and healthier world. Would that that were the case? Thank you for listening. I'm Salvatore Bobonis. You can find out more about me at my website at SalvatoreBobonis.com, or you can also sign up for my monthly newsletter on global affairs.