The Paris Climate Talks, Explained Using Star Wars - by Joe Romm

The buzzword of the moment at the Paris climate talks is “ratchet.”  Will the nations of the world agree to ratchet up their carbon pollution reduction commitments every five to 10 years — as will be required if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming?

The ratcheting could be thought of like episodes in a long-running movie series.
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The problem with overstating what Paris is accomplishing is that it can create the impression the world doesn’t have much more work to do — since 2.7°C seems so very close to the 2°C “defense line” the world’s top climate experts warn against crossing.  The president himself created that impression as he continued:

That’s too high.  We wanted to get 2°C or even lower than that.  But if we have these periodic reviews built in, what I believe will happen is that by sending that signal to researchers and scientists and investors and entrepreneurs and venture funds, we’ll actually start hitting these targets faster than we expected, and we can be even more ambitious.  And so when you look at the cumulative targets that may exist 10 years from now, we may well be within the 2°C increase.

In fact, while I firmly believe the U.S., China, and most other countries will hit targets faster than expected, there is essentially no possibility that “cumulative targets that may exist 10 years from now” could bring us “within the 2°C increase.”

Again, we are going to need to ratchet things down decade after decade (explainer video here).  The chances that by 2025 all of the major nations of the world will come to the table with firm, credible pledges that extend through 2100 and bring us “within the 2°C increase” is about the same as the chances that … the Star Wars series was going to end with Episode Five.


Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, has it right in his new Foreign Policy piece.  He writes that the Paris pledges, “when you add them up, would warm the planet 3.5 degrees if they were kept.”  He puts that in perspective:  “That’s historic, that’s remarkable — and that’s also a disaster.  A world that warms 3.5 degrees would not be a world with civilizations that resemble ours.”

So the nations of the world will have to ratchet up their targets again and again to keep total warming below 2°C (3.6°F).  The good news is that doing so will be super-cheap — according to every major independent economic analysis and all of the world’s leading governments, as I discussed back in January.  And that’s without counting some $300 trillion in avoided climate damages — and $18 trillion in health and productivity co-benefits.

But we’re much nearer the beginning of this epic fight than the end.  There’s new hope, for sure, but we have many battles yet to come.

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