Other Papers Say: 5 years on, still spewing carbon

The following editorial originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times:

Representatives from nearly every country on Earth met in Paris five years ago and promised to work together in an unprecedented effort to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, with a preferred goal of capping the rise at 1.5 degrees. It took a lot of maneuvering and diplomacy by the Obama administration to reach that agreement after a similar effort six years earlier in Copenhagen failed.

What changed in the interim was strengthened resolve by the U.S. and a decision by China, whose cities were choking on coal-fired smog, to join in the move to a new energy future. Even though some climate advocates argued that the Paris Agreement fell short of what was necessary to achieve its goals, it stood as a framework for moving forward.

But then things unraveled with the election of President Donald Trump, who denounced the agreement, then reneged on the United States’ promises by walking away from it — making the U.S. the only nation in the world to not be part of the pact.

So here we are five years after the Paris Agreement, still spewing carbon. In fact, the Emissions Gap Report that the United Nations issued Dec. 9 says that even if countries keep the promises they made under the Paris Agreement, the global temperature would still rise to 3.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century — far too warm.

A separate U.N. Production Gap Report issued recently found that while nations must reduce fossil fuel production by about 6 percent a year through 2030 to meet the Paris goals, “countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2 percent.”

Contrary to Trump’s assertions, the Paris agreement did not impose “draconian financial and economic burdens” on the U.S., nor is climate change a bit of Chinese chicanery to gain economic advantage. Climate change is as real as wildfires, as real as rising seas that imperil tens of millions of people worldwide, as real as hurricanes made stronger and increasingly volatile by warming ocean temperatures.

The catastrophe is, in fact, upon us. We must redouble efforts to mitigate the worst effects of the problems that we, through decades of human activity, have wrought.

We cannot change by clinging to the past. Oil corporations are already transforming themselves — though not quickly enough — into energy companies. Governments must help workers in that sector retrain for jobs in the growing renewables industry, push through new infrastructures to accommodate the changes, help people transition their own methods of transportation and warming or cooling their homes, and work to end the extraction of fossil fuels in the first place. Our world hangs in the balance.