Une Nuit A Paris

Fiona Harvey has written a topical and informative article entitled "The Paris agreement five years on: is it strong enough to avert climate catastrophe?" (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/08/the-paris-agreement-five-years-on-is-it-strong-enough-to-avert-climate-catastrophe). She obviously thinks that it was pretty impressive getting a signed agreement between 196 countries to attempt to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The signatories were from rich and poor countries. The latter, tend to only minor polluters but often suffer badly from the activities of their larger, richer counterparts. Although Harvey thinks the agreement has survived attempts to wreck it pretty well, some of her data still makes depressing reading. At the time of the Paris agreement, around 50 bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (a major 'greenhouse' gas) were being released into the atmosphere. By 2019, this had risen to 55 bn tonnes. Although the Covid-19 pandemic largely brought transport, industry and commerce to a standstill, levels have continued to rise. This suggests that we don't really appreciate what our baseline production of greenhouse gases is. She also notes, that over the last 5 years, extractions of fossil fuels have risen at 2% per annum, whilst, each year, an area of forest (one carbon 'sink') the size of the UK has been removed. We have also not looked after bogs or the tundra. Harvey points to obvious positives, such as the increasing uses (and reducing the costs) of wind and solar power. She is also enthusiastic about the development of electric vehicles. Two major things worry me. The first is that an awful lot of diplomatic effort was clearly put in by the French to obtain the Paris agreement (and, still, it only seemed to squeak through, by recognising that poorer countries would need considerable financial help to move to low carbon economies). The delayed Cop26 meeting, scheduled for Glasgow, seems to have generated nothing like the same diplomatic effort and, post pandemic, rich countries seem to be getting stingier with aid. My second concern is that we still don't a) seem to fully appreciate where all our emissions come from (or take responsibility for them) and b) have any clear understanding of probable existence of environmental 'tipping points'. I don't think there is a simple relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide emitted and the global temperatures that are likely to be generated. We may have less time than we think. We might need Paris++!