What is the Paris climate conference?

Well, you can think of it as a dinner party for 25,000 people

and none of them really get along that well

and they have to save the world from total climate disaster

But will it actually work?

To start, let's take a look back the last 25 years of negotiations.

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro the UN created a treaty to stabilize greenhouse gas levels so they wouldn't actually mess with the climate.

But the treaty mostly just said that

countries should figure out how to actually accomplish that goal using

other future treaties.

The Kyoto Protocol required industrialized countries to cut their GHG emissions... a little

but developing countries including China and India

weren't required to curb emissions at all and the US didn't ratify the treaty.

So that didn't really work.

After 12 years of negotiations dragged on

the big dinner party that was supposed to result in a planet saving deal actually

went pretty badly.

So last year, in Lima,

diplomats agreed on a new approach.

Let a country decide for itself how it will fight climate change

...but commit to it, dammit.

These countries specific pledges are called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs.

So now we're in Paris

where diplomats hope to reach an agreement

that centers around countries INDCs.

But how can companies accountable

to those pledges... and what actually goes into them?

There are a bunch of different options on the menu

And, the prices vary dramatically.

So India leans over to the United States and says

"I got 300 million people without electricity"

"I think I'm just gonna stick with a bunch of the cheap coal."

And the U.S., kinda hypocritically says "No way India, you've got to try the green energy, it is phenomenal."

And India says "No, I really think I want the coal. You used to love it, you look great and I think I should give it a shot."

But if India think it deserves to use cheap and easy coal to

speed up its development and lift several millions out of poverty

Who is the U.S. or China to say that it shouldn't?

And that's just the first course.

There are plenty of other courses to be picked through and paid for.

How much effort do we put forth preventing climate change

by regulating power plants or replacing

fossil fuel subsidies with renewable energy subsidies versus adapting to it,

by say, building seawalls

versus compensating those already screwed by it, by awarding emergency funding to repair

damage caused by natural disasters. The more we can mitigate climate change the

less we actually have to adapt to it but climate change is already hitting some communities

heavier than others.

Furthermore, can we make clean technology easy for developing countries to acquire?

And what doesn't even need to be developing country? How do we make sure

that countries have the strongest institutions and best information to

deal with climate change? And then, as with all dinners the tensest moment

arrives. What do we do with the bill? Countries could develop cheaply and

sustainably if richer countries were covering a lot of the expense. After

Copenhagen richer countries agreed to mobilize a hundred billion dollars

annually by 2020 in funding for countering climate change in developing

countries. But where exactly will the money come from and how much more will

be needed? All these questions are on the table in Paris. So what might actually be achieved?

In 2010, world leaders decided that you have to keep global warming below 2 degrees

Celsius or we'd be in for full-scale world felt. The bad news is that

there's no way any Paris agreement will achieve that, but the good news is that doesn't mean the

world has to end. If we continue things business as usual we would be in for 4.5

degrees of warming, but if countries committed to existing INDCs, that helps us

bring that down to about 3 degrees. Hotter than we want, but better than nothing.

And a Paris deal could at least start to figure out how to mobilize that money

and technology to make that follow through happen. And the better news is that even

if Paris totally flops and everybody's just hurling Brie and baugette at one another,

cities and private companies can take action to cut emissions and make a

difference. In fact, they are the real key players here, because diplomacy isn't

real climate action. How does an treaty matter if no one does what it says.

Grist will be in Paris this November and December covering the climate conference.

Check in with us then for all the policy news and baugettes you could ever want.

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