CLIMATE CHANGE: what does it mean?

The Treaty Five Years Later

It's five years since the Paris Treaty was agreed upon, what progress has the world made?

It had a very rocky start, and although slow, most nations are committed. Spaceship Earth has humongous momentum that makes it difficult to change direction, but change is coming.

The treaty's first blow came with the election of Trump as US president. He had campaigned on a promise to withdraw from the accord, and that's what he did. Not only that, he defanged the US EPA and rolled back many environmental regulations. But fortunately China, and the rest of the major world economies, held the treaty together and prevented its anticipated collapse.

The changes that have been implemented in the past four years, after it was ratified in 2016, cannot be measured by reductions in CO2 emissions, but they have been significant. I have noted two major changes. The first is the change in attitude of investors to fossil fuel companies, which have forced CEOs of those companies to implement climate change policies. In other words, the investment industry accepted the need for climate action and have muscled energy companies to respond accordingly. Norway's wealth fund divestment of coal investment and withdrawal from oil and gas investments were good examples of such high-level policy changes. Denmark's decision to stop all oil and gas in its section of the North Sea and to completely phaseout all fossil fuel extraction by 2050 is another.

The second is the response of energy industry itself, induced ultimately by financial incentives and opportunities, to push into renewable energy. While renewables still account for a small fraction of all energy supply, the rate of increase of that share is significant, and it has momentum. The big economies are all moving in the same direction, and with the recent election of Biden to the white house, the USA will be rejoining the treaty and the movement towards more renewables will get a significant boost.

The efforts of one determined teenager by the name of Greta Thunberg also deserves note. Her single-minded determination to focus world attention on the climate change issue was unprecedented. Her efforts helped many other young people around the world to make their voices heard. The pent up frustrations of young people to the lack of political leadership on climate change unleashed a wave of protests, of which the world had never seen. They may have helped to tip the consensus at the high echelons of power in favour of climate-change action. They're fighting for their future, and for once, the powers that be have listened.