Many scientists say the Paris deal should have included quantified targets on the size and timing of emission cuts to meet its 1.5 oC and 2 oC goals. Why were they left out?
I think it would have been a very bad idea to have those targets in there, because you would have locked in the possibility of an inadequate number. It was much better to say emissions 鈥減eaking as early as possible鈥�, have a clear end-goal, and a five-year review cycle to get us there.
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This is a bottom-up process. The architecture of this agreement is to have very strong global goals, a nationally determined process of commitments, and then every five years come back and say: 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 do enough, let鈥檚 have another go.鈥� That鈥檚 the only way of doing it in this world. There is no way of imposing commitments on countries, it can鈥檛 be done.
Will this approach be enough to get strong action on climate change?
No agreement could ever guarantee that countries will do enough. The countries are putting huge pressure on themselves, and the 1.5 oC ambition creates extra pressure. Every five years we will have an emissions gap to a 2 oC goal and an emissions gap to a 1.5 oC goal [the gap between what is being done and what needs to be done]. And because that鈥檚 there, the pressures will be more than they were before. We don鈥檛 know whether they will succeed. It partially depends on the technologies 鈥� but my god the countries have put pressure on themselves to get there.
What is remarkable is that since Copenhagen [in 2009] the price of solar has dropped by 80 to 90 per cent. Five years in this world is a very long time. It now takes technologies less time to come to market. Two years ago none of us thought renewable energy storage was anywhere near ready.
Now we鈥檝e got home storage for electricity from renewables being marketed by Tesla and others. So over the next five years the development of technologies and price reduction could make it possible to improve on 2020 commitments. That鈥檚 what this deal is designed to drive.
How about concerns that the 1.5 oC and 2 oC targets are based on climate models that tend to assume we will suck large amounts of CO2 out of the air, for example, by planting huge areas for biofuels that may compete with food and water resources?
This is one issue that we鈥檙e going to have to face. Most of those models include negative emissions [the technical term for sucking CO2 out of the air] in the second half of the century. It鈥檚 quite a long time away, so we鈥檝e got time to improve those technologies. Carbon capture and storage may start to be implemented more widely than it is now, but it鈥檚 a huge challenge.
It is the challenge of starting 25 years too late. You know, action now is really quite ambitious compared to where it鈥檚 been in the past. The reason we鈥檙e off-track is not because countries are not committing to enough now, it鈥檚 because they鈥檙e starting too late.
And of course it鈥檚 down to the developed countries. They have not done enough up to this point so we鈥檙e starting further behind the line than we should have done. We鈥檝e got a lot of catching up to do.
The agreement doesn鈥檛 start until 2020. What needs to happen now?
Countries need to continue current efforts. There鈥檚 a lot to do before this agreement starts to ensure the baseline for action is better. The European Union and others who are going to overachieve their climate targets for 2020 should see what more they can do.
is senior adviser at the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris, and a researcher at the Grantham Research Institute, UK, and University College London. From 2007 to 2010 he was special adviser to UK prime minister Gordon Brown
(Image: Michael Jacobs)
