A weekend in Paris. What's been going on in the past days at the COP21
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What has been going on in Paris during the last weekend?
On Monday the COP conference entered its second and last week with little agreement between the parts. Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister and COP 21 president, Friday declared that what has been done so far “it’s not enough”.
And in fact, reading the draft treaty that has been published on Saturday, December 5th, it’s hard not to agree with him. This 48 page long document covers all the fundamental issues for whom a deal was expected to reached at the beginning of the conference; that is containment of world temperature to financial aids to least developed countries.
However there is little consensus on every part of it. For example, while developed countries push for a maximum increase of world temperature in the next decades, of 2C° degrees compared to the pre-industrial average, less developed countries want it to be set at 1.5C°.
Another disagreement is about how biding this agreement should be. While China, in its newly found ecofriendly version, wants it to be entirely legally binding, Obama is more cautious. Knowing that a Republican-led congress would never vote in favor of such a strong agreement, the US diplomats are advocating for a treaty whose provisions are just in part mandatory. Is this a Chinese fine strategy to put the blame of a potential failure on the American government?
Richer countries have pledged to donate $100 billion per year to least developed countries after 2020. According to India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, however, this sum is not going to be enough. Meanwhile at this link it’s possible to find an infographic that explains who has pledged how much, in the past year, for climate change and cutting carbon emissions.
Not only countries and Multilateral Development Banks have promised money though. A billionaires’ alliance, led by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and composed, among others by Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been found. Aim of this project is to finance research over oil made from solar energy, or solar fuel. Today this enterprise is worth $2 billion, with the intent of making it worth over $20 billion in the next few years, when companies will start joining it.
In the next few days ministers from all over the world will fly to Paris trying to reach an agreement. Whether there will be an agreement at all, a small one, or a turning point for the next decades, we can’t say yet. It’s worth to notice that even with all the difficulties listed here, there is some widespread optimism, both from politicians, and some illustrious commenters.
More posts in this blog will follow, covering all the most important news and events.
