Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015, will be an important date for generations to come.
It was the date that, for the first time, representatives of 195 nations reached a landmark accord committing nearly every country on earth to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.
It was historic. And with good reason: There is no plan B, and we’re already dreadfully behind.
The new deal, by itself, won’t stop global warming. At best, scientists say, it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half enough of what is necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the point studies indicate the world will be locked into rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages and more extreme and destructive storms.
But the hope is that the deal reached in Paris might represent the moment at which, because of a shift in global economic policy, the inexorable rise in planet-warming carbon emissions that began during the Industrial Revolution might start to level out and eventually decline.