Overview: Our
planet is warming at an alarming rate. Indeed, 2015 was the hottest year ever,
surpassing the previous record set just a year earlier, according to NASA and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There is overwhelming worldwide
consensus among climate scientists that:
·
the climate is undergoing a pronounced warming
trend beyond the range of natural variability;
·
the major cause of most of the observed warming
is rising levels of the greenhouse gas CO2;
·
the rise in CO2 is the result of burning fossil
fuels;
·
and failure to drastically reduce CO2 emissions “would
lock the planet into a future of catastrophic impacts, including rising sea
levels, more devastating floods and droughts, widespread food and water shortages
and more powerful storms,” according to the New
York Times.
The world has made a variety of unsuccessful attempts to
address this crisis, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen
Accord. While these agreements established a global consensus that countries
should reduce CO2 emissions and even compensate poor nations disproportionately
harmed by climate change, the emission reduction targets were either
insufficient or non-binding. In other words, these agreements did not do enough
to combat climate change.
In December, 2015, world leaders came to a new agreement in
Paris, France. The Paris agreement is noteworthy because for the first time,
participating nations sought to hold temperature increases “well below 2
degrees Celsius” and recognized a more ambitious target of 1.5 decrees Celsius.
To reach this goal, the Paris Agreement requires countries to regularly take
stock of their carbon emissions and set ambitious targets for further reductions.
It also calls upon countries to collectively contribute at least $100 billion
dollars a year to help other countries, especially poor nations, adapt to the
impacts of climate change.
However, the Paris Agreement is not legally binding,
essentially allowing any of the 189 signatory countries to break its promises
without consequences. The initial targets set by individual countries are also
inadequate for keeping global temperature increases below the official goal of
1.5 degrees Celsius. As such, we are still on a path toward global catastrophe.
The question:
Given the gap between the lofty goals of the Paris Agreement
and the modest hard numbers that countries have actually committed to, should
the Eurasian Conference…
-Require all countries to meet emission reduction targets
consistent with a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures;
-require all countries to pay a share into the $100 billion
per year climate adaptation fund that is proportional to their share of world
income, as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP);
and
-punish countries who fail to meet their commitments with
economic sanctions equal to 1% of their GDP?
