Ten years after the landmark Paris Agreement, and with climate change already causing dangerous extremes all over the planet, the United Nations-led system based on consensus and pledges faces tough questions.
Has climate diplomacy done enough? Can it survive in an era of fracturing global alliances and economic uncertainty?
The United States has already been yanked out of the Paris Agreement by its President, Donald Trump, for a second time. To add fuel to the fire, the USA and other major producing countries are planning to extract even more coal, oil, and gas, turning away from a 2023 UN climate agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the European Union missed a key UN deadline to submit its climate plans, while number one polluter China low balled its target.
Former UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said COP summits are still “absolutely necessary” to unite countries and hold them accountable for their action, or inaction. “I don’t think there’s any other way to address a threat to humanity as big as this is,” she said.
For frontline countries, like Pacific island nations threatened by rising sea levels, 1.5C is not a number but a matter of survival.
The UN says the deal has made a difference. Before Paris, the world was heading to 5C of warming by the end of the century, a trajectory now moderated to a still catastrophic 3C.
Scientists say the long term limit of 1.5C will be breached in a matter of years. The world experienced its first year above 1.5C in 2024, and witnessed monster fires, floods, and heatwaves.
“We must admit failure, failure to protect peoples and nations from unmanageable impacts of human-induced climate change,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“But we don’t have to keep failing.”
Are we going to keep on failing until humanity finally learns its lesson the hard way? Or do we try harder to give the next generation of humans a better chance? That is a choice we will have to make very soon.*
