The Paris Agreement is Failing

Germany, Poland, etc., for example, are not meeting their self-imposed commitments regarding CO2 emissions reductions. In fact, the Paris Agreement bookkeepers show that almost no one is meeting their commitments. Let’s look at the graphic they have developed to show the status:

The chart shows how the key nations or national groups are performing with respect to meeting the self-imposed commitments for CO2 emission reductions.  The Paris Agreement objective is to hold Global Temperature rise to 1.5C by 2050.   These initial commitments are not enough to do that but were planned to be a start with the nations and national groups accomplishing further reductions as time passes.  That may be problematic if they can not even make the “easy to accomplish” initial commitments.

I hope you can read the chart, but just in case you can’t it is constructed as follows:

Across the top are 6 performance categories—   

·         Role Model

·         1.5C Paris Agreement compatible

·         2C Compatible

·         Insufficient

·         Highly insufficient

·         Critically Insufficient

No one has made the Role Model category

Morocco and The Gambia are 1.5cº Paris Agreement Compatible.   Are you beginning to see why I say the Agreement is failing if only these two inconsequential nations (with respect to emissions) make the grade.

The 2cº compatible  category has Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines. Well, India is a major emitter but what they tell the Paris Group and where the Indian leaders appear to be taking the country are very different.

Insufficient category nations are Australia, Brazil, the EU, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru and Switzerland. The EU is a major emitter, but the others are not.  

Highly insufficient nations are Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and the UAE.   China is already the world’s No.1 CO2 emitter and they don’t plan to stop increasing their emissions until 2030.

And now for the Critically Insufficient we have Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the USA, and Ukraine.

The US has reduced its emissions as a result of the ongoing change over from coal to natural gas.  That change over is driven by economics, and not by government edict.

There is another surprise waiting for those that think the all is well with the Paris Agreement.  Starting next year, a $100billion fund is to be created by the “developed nations”.  The money is then available to the less developed nations to accomplish CO2 reductions in their nation.  Each year a new $100billion are to be deposited into this fund by those same developed nations, perhaps forever.

 $10billion was to be deposited into this fund over the past 5 years.  Then President Obama, chipped in $2billion.   Last I looked, the fund has not reached the expected $10billion.  These countries can’t come up with $8billion in 5 years.  Make a guess if they are going to contribute another $100billion into that fund next year.  And the year after that, and the year after that, etc.

You might think that the writers of the Paris Agreement wanted to make a joke to see if anyone would catch it by making this arrangement—China, the world’s largest emitter of CO2 and the 2^nd largest economy in the world, is part of the group that can draw on that fund, not contribute to it.     Unfortunately, it is not a joke.

Cbdakota