The Paris Agreement…

The Paris agreement on climate change has produced a few results – some remarkable and some not so great.

Scientists and climate action groups such as the Buddhist Climate Action Network (BCAN) and Earth Holding Sangha have been pushing for no more than a 1.5° centigrade increase over the pre-industrial levels.

The agreement stated,

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
– see What The Paris Agreement Does, and Doesn’t Do from 350.org

Other parts of the agreement were even weaker than this.

Pledges to cut emissions and get off of fossil fuels received no concrete support, in my opinion.

The statements are wishy-washy and inconclusive.

There is no real authority for any government to accomplish and of the goal set out by the Paris agreement.

Watch Naomi Klein’s video:

What we needed is something like

“To deal effectively with the climate crisis, we need to experience a sense of urgency . . . collectively, on a mass scale.

We must feel it horizontally, as a global community embracing all nations and peoples and life forms on earth, and we must feel it vertically, as directed toward countless generations as yet unborn.

[And] we must act quickly and effectively while we still have a fighting chance. There is no more time for delay.”
—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi (see BCAN website)

The most serious oversights of the Paris agreement, in my opinion, have to do with racial, social, economic and women’s rights as well as the rights of the most vulnerable nations – the ones who will drown when sea levels rise due to global warming.

Nothing enforceable was decided.

Actually, I don’t think there were any enforceable decisions at all!

Do you want to know more about climate action?