Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
World leaders certainly have warped priorities.
This week more than 150 countries are meeting in Paris in an attempt to agree on a deal to prevent the earth from warming more than 2 degrees celsius.
Think about this for a second. The same leaders that can’t stop ISIS or stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons have the power to stop the earth from warming?
And of course, President Obama will be attending to lead the world…
The Los Angeles Times previews the climate meeting:
The international conference on climate change that opens here Monday is widely expected to produce a historic agreement among nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say cause global warming.
Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said Saturday that 183 countries accounting for nearly 95% of global greenhouse gas emissions have submitted plans for how they would reduce emissions.
“This,” said Fabius, speaking to reporters at the tightly secured summit venue, “is radically new.”
Yet for all the potential for Paris to deliver a transformative and unifying moment — with diverse leaders gathering in a city shaken by recent terrorist attacks in order to confront a different kind of threat — experts say that on a practical level, it might prove just another steppingstone in the long stop-start international effort to address climate change.
As Fabius acknowledged, the plans of the 183 countries are projected to limit global warming by between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius — not the 2-degree threshold at which scientists say most of the worst effects of climate change could be avoided.
The likelihood that the current goals will fall short of the 2-degree target is one of many reasons experts emphasize another urgent goal in Paris: to ensure that nations agree to regularly revisit the terms of whatever deal they reach.
