Paris Climate Accord: Interactive guide and post-mortem

This interactive graphic by Carbon Brief outlines and explaines all the fundamental components of the Paris climate deal. Among other issues, the graphic covers mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance and transparency. It looks at the elements of the so-called “ambition mechanism”, the inclusion of a 1.5C aspirational target, the long-term goal, and much more.

INTERACTIVE: The Paris Agreement on climate change
CarbonBrief

1.5C is a brave new world
Piers Forster, CarbonBrief
Some have derided the 1.5C target as a pipe dream, given that current national pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – could bring us closer to 3C. However, the limited research that does exist suggests that it is possible to overshoot 1.5C and return below it by 2100. And the figure below illustrates how a five-year ratchet mechanism of increasingly ambitious INDCs could deliver a temperature close to 1.5C by 2100.

A beginner’s guide to what transpired at the Paris climate summit
Shailendra Yashwant, Scroll.in
The Paris Agreement only commits to “mobilising” $100 billion per year by 2020 to cover not just emission cuts but also adaptation. This is far short of the support required, and there is no firm commitment to increase this figure, merely an aspiration to review it by 2025. And since it is about money, basically no one knows where the money is coming from and until then, countries are allowed to continue emitting against self-designated targets, aka Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.

The Paris climate change agreement was a day late and a dollar short
Arati Kumar-Rao, Scroll.in
The preamble of the Paris Agreement seems to have its heart in the right place. The operative text, however, seems to have sold its soul to the highest bidder. Some insist it is a start, that there is now something on the table – but to hail it as the saviour the world was waiting for is anything but the truth. This is no “get out of jail free” card.

India’s waterman says U.S. won in Paris
The Hindu
Magsaysay Award winner and water conservationist Rajendra Singh says the landmark agreement on climate change reached in Paris earlier in December could harm India’s interests. The Paris agreement, Mr. Singh feels, absolves the United States of its liability for causing climate change in the first place, and goes against the spirit of the Rio de Janeiro, Copenhagen and Kyoto summits which imposed financial damages on it. “This means America has won and it means that the world’s environment has been put in danger,” Mr Singh said. “Everyone was looking to the Paris summit to make the U.S. pay damages, but now it has succeeded in bringing itself on the same playing field as developing countries in terms of liability, even though everyone acknowledges that America is the major culprit.”

The Paris Agreement and Being Grateful for Small Mercies
Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, The Wire
How do we explain the radical shift in the position of the developed countries? Why have they forsaken the Kyoto Protocol and why did they begin to press for a drastic revision in the accepted interpretation of Convention principles and provisions? The answer lies in the realm of economics, not environment.

Climate change and the summit smokescreen
Ian Angus and Phil Gasper, Socialist Worker
President Barack Obama joined world leaders at the UN climate summit–officially called the 21st Congress of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 21–in Paris this week, and promised to work for an “ambitious” agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. But climate justice activists who are trying to put forward an alternative vision–in spite of a ban on protests by the French government after the November 13 terror attacks–say that much more is needed than the leaders of the world’s most powerful governments are willing to consider.

Carbon trading in Paris Agreement has set us up for failure
Steffen Böhm, The Ecologist
Hidden away in the pages of UN-speak that make up the Paris Agreement are the makings of global carbon market in which a host of exotic emissions derivatives can be freely traded. And it’s all going to be a huge and expensive distraction from the real and urgent task of cutting emissions.

The Paris Agreement is a Good Instrument – if 55 States are Able to Ratify it By 2017
Mrinalini Shinde, The Wire
A universal disappointment in the document has been its neglect of human rights and gender justice. However, it must be emphasised that this is a watershed moment in global climate governance simply because negotiators, politicians and civil society actors successfully rallied, debated, compromised and pushed for cooperation – their efforts leading a positive outcome from the Conference of Parties 21, an outcome that had seemed disappointingly unlikely at times, and an outcome which definitely displays the sort of political will required today for affirmative climate action states.

At Paris, something for everyone
Sudhir Chella Rajan & Sujatha Byravan, The Hindu
The importance of loss and damage has been recognised clearly in the text but there is also a clear demarcation in the Decision (though not in the Agreement) that this cannot be tied to liability and compensation. Without liability and compensation there will be no scope for victims of climate change to file legal claims, which implies that there is no guarantee that losses and damage associated with severe weather events directly as a consequence of climate change will receive monetary or non-monetary relief from entities that are identified as defendants.

Climate change deal: five reasons to be glad, five to be gloomy
John Vidal, The Guardian
Will the deal agreed in Paris be enough to save the planet? Emissions cuts and investment are promised, but legal responsibilities are thin on the ground.

Hot Air? World Leaders Fact-Checked During Paris Climate Change Conference
Alexios Mantzarlis , Poynter.org
The Paris climate change conference is coming to a close, and observers are reportedly confident some kind of agreement will be reached. As with the G20 summit last month, fact-checkers from across the world scrutinized the claims made by political leaders attending the international jamboree. Many of the claims dealt with targets each country has put forward to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or the work they say they’ve already done toward that goal.

A tipping point for humanity?
James Fahn, Medium.com
When it comes to climate change, there is a lot of talk — and a lot of worrying — about tipping points. When might the methane deposits in the Arctic melt en masse and release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? Will the West Antarctic ice sheet really slip uncontrollably into the sea, potentially raising sea levels by three meters? These are negative inflection points, threatening to tip the climate-ocean system into disequilibrium and unleash cascading crises. But what if there was a positive tipping point, one that could help counter-balance these threats? That could turn vicious circles into virtuous circles?