COP21: Climate deal final draft 'agreed' in Paris
bbc.com
bbc.com
1) The plans that the nations put forward are about 1/2 the reduction in emissions required to prevent a 2 degree C rise in temperature.
2) There are no legally binding targets for emission reduction
3) There is no enforcement
How can anyone see this conference as a net positive? We spent a lot of money, and emitted a lot of CO2 flying hundreds if not thousands of people to Paris, to come up with the equivalent of a change.org petition in terms of actual legal value. I think this is a net negative. It seems that after all the pre-conference hype about this being the last chance, the delegates actually couldn't agree to something substantial and just signed a feel good document that actually doesn't require anything concrete of the countries other than good intentions and then are making a big deal how they signed a treaty to save the world. This is grandstanding, inefficiency, and waste with no benefit for anybody (except for the frequent flyer miles of the journalists covering the conference).
0) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-chang...
Some elements of the accord would be voluntary, while others would be legally binding. That hybrid structure was specifically intended to ensure the support of the United States: An accord that would have required legally binding targets for emissions reductions would be legally interpreted as a new treaty, and thus would be required to go before the Senate for ratification.
But that proposal would be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate, where many members question the established science of climate change, and nearly all hope to thwart President Obama’s climate change agenda.
Worse, typical with the latest wave of "agreements" world leaders are regularly doing their best to avoid having to seek approval at home of their legislative bodies. Why? Because bad deals are bad deals.
The idea that developing nation status is partially based on per capita wealth makes it a joke where large population countries that have serious wealth divides are allowed to exploit treaties such as this. If anything it encourages them to not integrate the poorer of their nations into the whole.