Last December, the United Nations held its 21st annual conference on climate change in Paris: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The conference of 195 parties aimed to legally bind countries in reducing emissions, with an emphasis on developed nations helping reduce the emissions of developing nations. The goal was to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius past the pre-industrial average global temperature. Although the conference has been widely viewed as the most successful action in recent years devoted to combating climate change, it has yet to be seen whether the parties involved will fully commit to the agreement.
Part of this issue is that while the treaty is under international law, not every aspect of it is legally binding—specifically, the emission targets for each nation and financial commitments. Determining which parts of the treaty should be legally binding was an issue for several countries, especially the United States. In the U.S.’s case, any legally binding treaty would have to be reviewed and ratified by the Senate, which is largely Republican, and would be unlikely to be approved.
In fact, the U.S. Republican Party could have a detrimental role in America’s involvement in the fight against climate change. That the U.S., the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has a major political party that has been predominantly denying the existence of climate change and is hostile to measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, bodes poorly for the future of the treaty. Many senior Republican members of Congress have consistently dismissed climate change as an elaborate hoax concocted by scientists and politicians alike. This denial throughout the majority of the Republican Party poses a terrifying issue with the 2016 presidential elections: since all current Republican candidates share this attitude towards climate change, if one is elected president, then any attempts by the U.S. to cull emissions at a federal level would be met with even more resistance.
This returns us to the fact that the Paris Agreement is not entirely legally binding. In summary, if the world is not able to slow the escalation of global warming, it at least knows of one scapegoat to blame.
Nevertheless, the Republican Party is not the only conservative group reluctant to take action against climate change. Poland’s new conservative government, elected last October, is more concerned about the Polish economy than the global environment. Poland’s economy is dependent on its coal industry, which will be affected by the actions that are currently being put in place to curb emissions. The European Union (EU) has a goal to reduce emissions by 40 percent, to have 27 percent of energy to come from renewable sources, and to increase efficiency by 27 percent, all by 2030. Poland’s Law and Justice Party sees these goals as too ambitious and will likely resist them in favor of the coal industry. However, with Europe’s strong dedication to the reversing climate change, and many of the EU’s countries in favor of making these emission targets even stricter, Poland was hard-pressed to loosen the limits of European emissions.
Poland did end up signing the climate deal. It still remains to be seen how far the Law and Justice party will go to protect against any change in Poland’s economy.
Another obstacle in the fight against warming global climates is economies that cannot handle a major shift to lower emissions. The main focus of the Paris Agreement on climate change was financing developing nations so they can afford to use more efficient technologies. The effects of climate change impact developing countries more heavily due to their limited ability to endure the conditions brought on by climate change, especially rising sea levels and extreme weather. As these countries develop, they contribute to more emissions because they cannot afford cleaner technologies. In particular, reducing deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil is a crucial point in the country’s plan to reduce emissions due to the forest’s important job as a carbon sink. With Brazil’s more recent economic difficulties, however, as well as the economic status of other developing nations, financial help from developed countries may be needed in order to meet target emissions.
The Paris Agreement can only take the world so far. Each of the 195 participating parties must draw up its own plan for domestic actions to curb emissions. Global climate change has been called the most critical and imminent current issue, as it is already affecting not just humans, but every organism on Earth. To correctly tackle the issue, many suggest that nations must put aside their concerns for economies, employment rates, industries, and other such political interests.