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in 2019 millions of climate change
activists took to the streets their
figurehead Greta timber addressed the US
Congress I don't want you to listen to
me I want you to listen to the
scientists here's the thing American
politicians have been hearing from
scientists about the threat of climate
change since the 1980s his evidence
represents a very strong case in my
opinion that the greenhouse effect has
been detected and it is changing our
climate now three decades on from James
Hansen's testimony climate change is now
recognized as the defining threat facing
the planet so why has so little been
done to stop it 50 years ago
environmentalism was a fringe topic but
within a few years in the late 1980s
climate change quickly rose up the
political agenda we have begun to fight
an important battle we must also expect
environmental responsibilities hundred
and forty species are becoming extinct
every day at Rio we have made a start
this is an incredibly fast bit of
worldwide discussion and diplomacy hard
to think of something else other than a
war that went that quickly
but turning this gathering interest into
decisive action was another matter
in 1997 UN members met in Kyoto to agree
for the first time on specific cuts to
greenhouse gas emissions
I am instructing increased negotiating
flexibility that there was a catch you
get a protocol but various constraints
on industrialized economies to cut their
emissions I put no constraints on
developing countries on the basis that
at that point the vast majority of
emissions had come form industrialized
countries Ozora Germany UN gave the
Kyoto Protocol universal legitimacy for
designing a treaty that all countries
could accept meant producing one with
very little practical power the UN has
this fundamental issue that is a
creature which members UN organizations
black craft they can't just tell their
member countries what to do this
wouldn't have mattered if every country
shared the same urgent need for action
but they didn't a sound environmental
policy is likely to benefit everyone
with the cost fall on particular groups
typically those that do most of the
polluting and it's these groups that
have a strong interest in avoiding these
costs most of the beneficiaries of
climate action are people who don't yet
exist or suddenly can't yet vote and so
aligning the general interests of that
mass of humanity with the specific
interests who are genuinely harmed by
reducing fossil fuel emissions that's
hard to do it would be a hard thing to
do
within one political body but if you
have to do it between lots of Nations
that's even harder
America a country which relies heavily
on fossil fuels like petrol coal and
natural gas refused to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol the use of fossil fuels has
completely exploded and it's impossible
to disentangle that explosion from the
huge growth in human population and in
human wealth that took place at the same
time so still about 80 percent of the
energy used on the planet is dug up from
the ground fossil fuels were formed from
the remains of organisms that lived and
died millions of years ago they hold a
lot of carbon within them making them a
very concentrated store of energy which
helps to explain the political power of
the companies extract and distribute
them
there was a concerted campaign funded by
various fossil fuel interests and to
some extent it carried on some of the
tactics that have been used by the de
backhoe companies to try and avoid
restrictions on tobacco and the result
was to undermine the science of climate
change beyond this if they didn't earn a
growing polarization in politics the
right tends to think that government
should regulate less sometimes much less
and there's no real way through the
climate crisis without government's
taking a very active role in the economy
so if you're starting off point is not
just I want to keep my oil profits but I
want to keep the government out of the
economy then wanting there to be less
action on climate change kind of fits
into that and then this China in 1997
China was considered a developing
country and so was exempt from the Kyoto
commitment to cut emissions in the years
that followed it took full advantage of
this exemption in the decade after Kyoto
China's GDP almost tripled and its
carbon dioxide emissions doubled making
it the largest greenhouse gas emitter on
the planet the Chinese attitude to
climate action was basically that it was
for someone else to do it was not going
to get in the way of China's
extraordinary arm - to industrialization
in far darker yellow jang wooyoung go
through a 500-yard heat will turned off
baha'i de tolly agreed only agreeing de
yo-yo for almost two decades China
refused to act
but in the 2010s who that changed
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honking your shadow changer in babe
she'll be about Gigi so why the change
of heart
one reason may be that China genuinely
does have quite a lot to lose from
climate change and another thing is in
that period viewable energy really
starts become a factor and that got
really going to be able to do some pop
and shine quacking or making it and so
leading on renewables revolutions are
sort of things that the Chinese
Communist Party can get behind the Paris
agreement required all countries both
developed and developing to commit to
tackling global warming it set a
specific target the increase in average
global temperature should be kept well
below two degrees with strenuous efforts
made to keep it down to 1.5 degrees but
as with every previous breakthrough
agreement
it involved compromise but problem with
this is that that was achieved by saying
to all the countries you tell us what
you can do and that's great
they'd basically given up on the idea
that countries would commit in something
like a legally binding way to specific
reduction the emissions cuts that
nations actually promised were far too
small to meet the two-degree target
there is the problem setting goals for
50 years time when your actions that
you've announced to do in the next ten
years are insufficient and within the
climate to diplomatic community there's
now a talk of ratcheting up as things go
on countries will get more developed
more ambitious in what they promise if
countries really do wrapped it up their
action against climate change it would
break the 50-year cycle in which
political compromises have repeatedly
enabled governments to avoid taking
effective action in that time co2
emissions have more than doubled in
every decade since then has been warmer
than the one before 50 years on from the
first Earth Day a new generation of
environmental activists are taking to
the streets they're determined to ensure
that politics finally delivers the
drastic action needed to protect the
planet I'm Oliver Morton
I'm the briefings editor at The
Economist we've written a series of
climate briefs to cover the basics and a
bit more than the basics on all sorts of
aspects of the climate crisis that's
facing the earth you can read them all
at the link opposite thank you for
watching
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