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Tom Friedman: Paris climate accord is a big, big deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/opinion/paris-climate-accord-is-a-big-big-deal.html?Seriously, Pres Obama and Sec. Kerry deserve credit, and thanks, for their persistence, initiative, and diplomatic and political achievements in the climate talks.
I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting here and it met all of them — beautifully. I say that without cynicism.
Any global conference that includes so many countries can’t be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator. But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high — a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions — means we still have a chance to meet what scientists say is our key challenge: to avoid the worst impacts of global warming that we cannot possibly manage and to manage those impacts that we can no longer avoid. That is a big, big deal.
Many leaders had a hand in it, but it would not have happened without the diplomacy of President Obama and John Kerry.
. . . . The only important holdout in the world to this deal is the U.S. Republican Party. I wouldn’t care about such cave men — as one sign borne by a Paris demonstrator said, “Dinosaurs didn’t believe in climate change either,” and it didn’t end well for them — except that one of these knuckleheads could be our next president and mess this up.
. . .
“The price of getting this issue behind us may never again be this cheap,” (Bush administration ex-energy official Andy) Karsner said of the G.O.P. “Congressional leaders need to evaluate the opportunity they have to reconnect with mainstream voters, scientific, civic and business leaders, geopolitical strategists and most anyone under 35 years old who’s completed eighth-grade science.”
With the earth on pace to add two billion more people by 2050, who will all want cars and homes, and with scientists saying the only way to stay below the 2 degrees C redline is to phase out all fossil fuels by roughly the same date, there is only one force big enough to do that — to take on Mother Nature at scale — and that’s Father Greed, a.k.a., the market. What will make this deal epochal is if the U.S. and China now lead the world in imposing a price on carbon, because only that will take to scale the already significant technology breakthroughs that have happened with wind, solar, batteries, energy efficiency and nuclear power.
Any global conference that includes so many countries can’t be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator. But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high — a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions — means we still have a chance to meet what scientists say is our key challenge: to avoid the worst impacts of global warming that we cannot possibly manage and to manage those impacts that we can no longer avoid. That is a big, big deal.
Many leaders had a hand in it, but it would not have happened without the diplomacy of President Obama and John Kerry.
. . . . The only important holdout in the world to this deal is the U.S. Republican Party. I wouldn’t care about such cave men — as one sign borne by a Paris demonstrator said, “Dinosaurs didn’t believe in climate change either,” and it didn’t end well for them — except that one of these knuckleheads could be our next president and mess this up.
. . .
“The price of getting this issue behind us may never again be this cheap,” (Bush administration ex-energy official Andy) Karsner said of the G.O.P. “Congressional leaders need to evaluate the opportunity they have to reconnect with mainstream voters, scientific, civic and business leaders, geopolitical strategists and most anyone under 35 years old who’s completed eighth-grade science.”
With the earth on pace to add two billion more people by 2050, who will all want cars and homes, and with scientists saying the only way to stay below the 2 degrees C redline is to phase out all fossil fuels by roughly the same date, there is only one force big enough to do that — to take on Mother Nature at scale — and that’s Father Greed, a.k.a., the market. What will make this deal epochal is if the U.S. and China now lead the world in imposing a price on carbon, because only that will take to scale the already significant technology breakthroughs that have happened with wind, solar, batteries, energy efficiency and nuclear power.
