I hate to be a 'downer' on the climate change agreement. With lots of world-wide attention, there was a real chance to actually make history and to at ameliorate possible climate change pace and impacts. But, the agreements from the summit are voluntary; the deadlines are way to long, and the money needed to address the issue is not mandatory. The words are nice in the agreement but they are straw men, hollow reeds.
The agreement makes no commitment to abandon fossil fuels. The time period for changes makes not sense. Do we have 30-50 years to meet targets, all of which are not mandated. If there is one thing that is certain, models underestimate change. Year after year since the first IPCC report, NEW factors have emerged that show an ever hastening climate disaster.
The summit and all of the nice talk appears to be more of a ruse to placate the masses and to lull them into thinking all will be okay---that it's all under control. It's not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/global-climate-change-sum_b_8801996.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
"But those are targets, not requirements. And the national action plans brandished by all but a few of the 195 nations voting for the Paris accord add up, in the first round of estimates, to fall very short of the target. Indeed, temperatures would rise between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius under the actual national plans, between five and more than six degrees Fahrenheit. That result would be absolutely disastrous.
President Barack Obama hailed the Paris summit accord as grandly historic. But former NASA scientist James Hansen, a founding father of climate change awareness, declared the summit "a fraud," an event of "no action, just promises."
So the agreement, at the insistence of the Obama administration, includes a schedule of regular reviews, every five years, of national action plans, essentially pushing the nations to resubmit new and better plans based upon technological advances and increased political will.
And the Paris accord does not call for an actual phase-out of widespread fossil fuel use.
Instead of "greenhouse gas emissions neutrality" in the draft, which some interpreted to mean an end to emissions, the phrase "global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible" was substituted. This change was made, not surprisingly, at the urgent insistence of Saudi Arabia and some other members of OPEC. The Saudi line is to keep burning oil and make up for it with carbon sinks such as new forest growth and techno-fixes down the line. Meanwhile, they are going to keep on pumping and selling."
