2015 Paris Agreement and Provisional Government of Earth
October 21, 2024
by William P. Meyers

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Analysis of Failure and Path Forward

The 2015 Paris Agreement, also known as the Paris Climate Accords, was supposed to be a solution to climate change, that is, global warming induced by carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. It was negotiated at the United Nations. It was a good effort, for the time, or at least an improvement on past attempts to find a solution to the problem, the oncoming environmental apocalypse. It has proven to be, on the whole, a failure. This article will bring readers up to speed on the Agreement. Then it will analyse the resulting failure. Finally, it will outline what should have been done, which is what still needs to be done, after the waste of a decade.

If you would like to read the full agreement, here is the document: Paris Agreement (English version)

So the first thing one needs to ask, quoting the Agreement, is: has it provided "for an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change,"e or not? For me the answer is clearly no. Of course there are still those, including the Republican Party (at least the Trump wing) that entirely deny the existence of climate change and its being caused by fossil fuel consumption. Almost a decade later, it is clear that the earth is in worse shape than it was when this agreement was signed. (It was signed in 2016, but had been finalized in 2015).

The main goal of the Agreement was "Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels." It became obvious that in 2023 we blew past the 1.5 degree goal. The scientists I believe are most trustworthy (do the best science) predict that we will also blow past the 2 degree goal, though they admit the timing of this is uncertain.

What will you not find in the agreement? It mentions greenhouse gases many times. The word oil does not appear. The word coal does not appear. The word gasoline does not appear. The term natural gas does not appear. The words car and automobile do not appear. Nothing related to the massive amount of fuel required to fly people around appeared. In other words, what the nations agreed to was that there is a problem and all they could really agree to was happy talk.

Wish do see some data? In 2015 estimated global annual carbon dioxide emissions were 35.46 billions of metric tons. In the latest year with available data, the number had risen to 37.55 billions of metric tons. Perhaps it would be even worse without the Agreement, but since the Agreement was a paper tiger, it might have actually led to a bigger increase than what would have otherwise occurred. [Annual Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Year]

The Paris Agreement is not, in itself, the problem. The problem is the way the world is set up, the global governance. Basically there is no global governance. There is the United Nations (U.N.) and a hodgepodge of treaties, many of which are ignored by nations great and not so great. International Law is mainly a theory. For instance, there are laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity, but they are only enforced by military victors, most of the time. There have been some reasonably successful international agreements on the environment, for instance on protecting whales. Meanwhile most other parts of the environment continue to fall apart.

It goes beyond the problem of nations and nationalism. Many business entities (usually corporations, but sometimes state-owned) are international in character. Chevron, Exxon, BP, Total, Aramco: they have the money to influence politics in their home nations, and collectively (sometimes individually) they have the money to influence politics anywhere they want to.

Of course, people can keep trying to reform the current system. A nudge here and shove there may sometimes improve things, but keep in mind there are usually economic interests nudging and shoving back. Treaties can be made with better enforcement mechanisms. Treaties could say they go into force even within nations that refuse to sign them. Treaties could actually agree to rapidly cut the production of fossil fuels. I find that highly unlikely.

Consider now the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of the United States of America. It has the powers it was given by Congress. The powers are substantial, but limited. The EPA did a very good job cleaning up US waterways and air (its original focus). It would be great if the EPA could rule that fossil fuel production in the U.S. will be cut by 10% a year for, say, 9 years, with some residual production phased out more slowly, given the difficulty of eliminating every fossil fuel burning engine in the country. It cannot make that rule without explicit action from Congress. And Congress is elected. Each member of Congress requires donations to run election campaigns, and many would need the votes of people who work in fossil fuel industries or cannot imagine being unable to drive around in a gasoline (or diesel) burning car or truck.

To minimize the Slow Motion Apocalypse that has already caused so much obvious destruction, the world need to rapidly and drastically cut back fossil fuel production. Because some nations, typically powerful nations, oppose this, and refuse to comply even with moderate cutbacks, we need to establish a global EPA. One that can force compliance in every and any nation. For that we need more than some treaty which any powerful nation could ignore whenever it wanted. We need a global government. That government would not replace nations, but nations would be required to give up certain powers. That government would need real powers to enforce its laws.

We need a government of earth. Those of us (nations, groups, individuals) who care about the future and the environment should go ahead and set up a provisional government of earth. There are a number of paths that might lead to a successful provisional government and then an effective government of earth. I have discussed some of those paths in other essays. See Provisional Government of Earth for those discussions.