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Good morning, John!
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So, the United States is pulling out of the Paris Climate...
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Agreement...
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Treaty...
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A - Accord?
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Protocol?
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The - I don't -
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Let's be honest - There's a really good chance that you have a strong opinion on the Paris agreement,
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... And an EVEN BETTER chance you don't really know what it is.
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There are too many things to know, so quick timeline...
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350 million years ago
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Ancient plants covered the earth, converting the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the air into Oxygen(O2)
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and carbohydrates.
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These plants then die, and they create massive mats of organic materials that get buried.
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Those organic materials then hang around under the earth getting heated up and smushed and form
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energy-dense hydrocarbons, also called "fossil fuels".
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Notice how cardohydrate and hydrocarbon sound similar.
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1882
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(There was a big gap there)
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Thomas Edison builds the first centralized coal-fired powerplant.
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We've been using coal for a long time before that, of course
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but I'm starting here because we have to start somewhere.
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For the next 100 years, fossil fuels brought tremendous growth and
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increases in quality life, specifically in Europe and America,
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where the vast majority of fossil fuels were burned.
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Decades pass. The benefits of fossil fuels eventually begin to spread
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and everyone is consuming more and more.
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It's great, for the most part, except that all that CO2 that was locked up in fossil fuels for
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billions of years is now being re-released
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and CO2 is really good at letting visible light pass through it
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but infrared radiation that gets bounced
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back up by the earth does not pass right through it.
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It gets trapped.
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So the earth's atmosphere and oceans start having more energy in them
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and that starts to change the climate.
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And while fossil fuels give us remarkable abilities to do cool and beautiful things
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and increase the quality of life
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here on earth, we also
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rely on a stable climate, for massive farming operations
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and coastal infrastructure (by which
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I mean all of the cities that people live in.)
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Jumping forward again
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to 2015, 270 countries get
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together in Paris with a goal:
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We want to keep the average warming of the earth below
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2 degrees Celcius because, if we don't, it's
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gonna be really bad for everyone.
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But the problem is no one country can handle this because even the biggest contributors, the U.S. and China, together make up less than
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half of the pie. Everyone needs to
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agree to make changes or no one benefits.
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Worse, the poor countries
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that have admitted basically zero greenhouse gases
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are going to be the ones that are most negatively affected by this CO2
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that's been released by the wealthy countries
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because they have more food and water insecurity,
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less access to good medicine, and less infrastructure.
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It's very difficult to say to them,
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No! Don't grow your economy using the same dirty fuels and techniques
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that we used to grow our economies.
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Instead! Buy these solar panels from us! With the money you don't have!
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Also, like, since any country that keeps burning its usual will have
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a competitive advantage in industry. (So, facing climate change) everyone agrees that everyone needs to agree,
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or this agreement is useless.
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With advice from scientists, the countries altogether determined
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how quickly the Earth needs to stop emitting greenhouse gases
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to meet the 2 degree goal.
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And then, based on how developed each country is, how many people they have,
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and how much they're currently emitting, they divvied up that responsibility.
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At the end, every country had a goal.
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There was no enforcement for meeting that goal, but there was a goal.
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And, some countries that had already benefitted a lot from the last hundred years
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of releasing carbon dioxide even threw in some money:
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billions of dollars to aid countries that hadn't benefitted from that,
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to help them grow with less reliance on fossil fuels.
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Every country agreed to their own path forward, and every country was responsible
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for figuring out how to meet their goals,
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whether it's through energy efficiency,
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subsidizing renewables, regulating businesses,
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changing people's behavior through education, or
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ending fossil fuel subsidies.
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And if countries don't meet their target?
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Again, nothing happens.
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There are no penalties.
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This is an agreement between nations that there is a problem,
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and we must lead together, or
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face the price. And, remarkably,
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A treaty that only encourages countries to reduce
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emissions with unenforceable promises is
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a gigantic step, and one that has
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already seen significant success.
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But this is an investment, and it does
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have costs. Do we know
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exactly what that price will be?
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No. We don't know precisely
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how much better off we'll be if we keep temperatures
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from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, and
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we don't know precisely how much we need to reduce
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greenhouse gas emissions to hit that target.
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But we do know that we are better off
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incentivizing these changes now, globally,
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because more than 600 million people
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live in areas threatened by sea level rise.
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Every person on Earth has
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to eat every single day,
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and climate refugees' lost crops
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and lost infrastructure could destabilize
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the entire world economy and result in
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a very bad era of human history,
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a sentiment to which the U.S. Department of
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Defense, by the way, agrees. Remarkably,
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thanks to a combination of energy efficiency,
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changing habits, and a shift from coal to
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natural gas and renewables, the United States
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was, until recently, on target
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to meet its Paris goals for decreasing
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emissions 26% from 2005
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levels by 2025.
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We've already decreased emissions by around 14%,
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even as the economy has grown.
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But if there is no political will to continue
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this, if the majority party in both houses
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of Congress and the president do not
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agree that humans are causing climate change
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and want to continue investing in the same energy
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systems Thomas Edison pioneered
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in the 1800s, we will stall.
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Other countries, at the moment, are pledging
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to move forward, leading in the absence
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of the United states. And, several states
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in the U.S., the ones with the largest economies,
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also have plans to abide by the
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agreement. But without the U.S.,
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a country that emits 18% of the world's
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greenhouse gases with just 4% of the
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population, this pioneering agreement
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is considerably weakened.
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After all, why would other countries hold
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up their side of the bargain if the country
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that benefitted the most from the Carbon Dioxide
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currently in the atmosphere shirks
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their responsibility? I, for one,
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am tired of politicians pretending that
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we don't all share
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this big, beautiful, but also quite small
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planet. I was proud that
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my country was a leader in establishing the Paris agreement,
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and I am ashamed at the step backward
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we have taken away from uniting humanity
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to take on this great global challenge.
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John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
