4 - Climate Negotiations

Summary

Magnificent piece of statecraft though it is, the Paris Agreement is unlikely to spare us from a future climate reckoning. Paris can be seen as the successor to a series of prior global emissions limitation agreements including the breathtakingly effective Montreal Protocol that addressed the cause of the “ozone hole” and the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first attempt to address climate change. Kyoto collapsed in failure and Paris was therefore midwifed with the Kyoto lessons in mind. We then delve into the structure, status, and limitations of the Paris Agreement before looking ahead to how it might evolve.