Is there an emerging consensus on climate change action?
Once again, the world is on a sprint toward a new agreement on global
climate change. The last time this happened — in 2009 — the sprint ended
in acrimony in Copenhagen. This time, the signs are more auspicious. As
someone who has been writing for nearly 25 years about the difficulties
of making serious progress on climate change, I am more optimistic today
than I have been in a very long time. When governments gather in Paris
late this year, I believe they are likely to adopt a watershed strategy
for slowing climate change. A shift in strategy was evident at climate talks in Lima in December, where Peru’s Manuel Pulgar served as conference president. treaties that all nations would supposedly sign and honor. That was
the logic of the 1997 Kyoto treaty — a logic that continued in
Copenhagen when governments tried to finalize an agreement that would
replace Kyoto. But what they found was that single integrated
undertakings are just too difficult to craft. There are so many
different countries, with different interests and capabilities, that
efficiently finding a single common agreement is all but impossible. This new approach relies heavily on national pledges for action – a so-called ‘bottom-up’ strategy. countries those commitments will be binding — something that is important to the European Union, for example — while for many others the effort will take on a more voluntary character. This new approach relies heavily on national pledges for action — a so-called “bottom-up” strategy to contrast with the “top-down” treaty-drafting efforts of the past two decades.
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