World leaders gathered in Paris this week in an effort to save the world from catastrophic climate change, but it may be too late, according to Stanford environmental law expert Michael Wara.
“The emissions reductions that countries are coming forward with and promising in Paris are not nearly enough to solve the problem of climate change,” Wara told NBC Bay Area.
The Paris talks are aimed at preventing future droughts, food shortages, rising oceans, and even widespread disease, which climatologists predict will occur if global temperatures increase more than 2 degrees Celsius.
If all countries continue with current policies, the global temperature rise would be about 3.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. Should each country at the conference keep its pledge made in Paris, the world would warm 2.7 degrees Celsius.
That’s better, but nowhere close to the critical benchmark.
No matter the outcome, this week’s talks are unprecedented, says Adele Morris, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“What’s unique about this meeting is that it’s the first time all countries, all major emitters or nearly all of them, have pledged to take action,” she said.
Morris added that the unprecedented nature of the talks has not detracted from criticism about shoddy standards.
“Well every country, or almost every country, is coming forward with its pledge that it designed itself for what emissions objectives they’re going to bring to the table,” she said.
In other words, each individual country is in charge of setting its own benchmark.
Despite those issues on the world stage, there are also several domestic hurdles that could impact the United States’ ability to move ahead with the Paris agreement.
“It’s not going to be an easy one to solve, particularly in the context of US politics,” Stanford’s Michael Wara said.
Wara refers to the 26 lawsuits brought by individual states against the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a joint venture with the Environmental Protection Agency that was announced in August. The plan sets standards for power plants and states to reduce the carbon emissions it says drive climate change.
The plan, however, could be unraveled entirely if the Supreme Court justices rule in favor of the states.
The standards set by the Clean Power Plan and the Paris agreement are also vulnerable to changes by the next president. That could have great impact on views of the U.S. as the world leader in climate change policy.
“Were the Supreme Court to strike down the regulations, were a Republican administration in 2017 to walk back from these commitments, the perception that the U.S. has kind of gotten its act together could change very quickly,” Wara said.
Even if the Obama administration wins in court, and the next president supports the Paris plan, there could still be a holdup in Congress. A climate deal demands contributions in the billions from rich countries to poor and developing ones, and some Republican lawmakers have threatened to leverage the lower house's power of the purse to stall any advance on that front.
The physical impact of the Paris conference could fall short and the future of the United States’ role in the global climate change effort still hangs in the balance, but this week’s talks are still a critical first step in getting more countries involved in climate change efforts.
