Climate Change: Five Things We've Learnt from COP24

Delegates to the UN climate conference in Poland have reached agreement on how to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which comes into force in 2020.
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Climate change chimes with young people in a way that is sometimes missing with older people, who make up the bulk of negotiators here.

The sense that perhaps this UN process doesn't quite connect with the modern world was summed up best by Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives and now their lead climate negotiator.

"Almost 10 years since I was last at these climate negotiations, I must say, nothing much seems to have changed.

"We are still using the same old, dinosaur language.  Still saying the same old words.

"Still making the same tedious points."

It would be hard to argue with this view given the shenanigans that played out at the end, when one country, Brazil, held up progress at the talks on one issue for a couple of days.
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Perhaps the most memorable image of this meeting was that of 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg.

This teenager who has organised school strikes in Sweden held daily press conferences here to drive home her message that platitudes and warm words just aren't enough anymore.

Her message was sharp and succinct.

"We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis."

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