The Climate Conundrum

Category: Environment

The crucial UN Climate Change Summit, at Lima, Peru, concluded recently. The two-week long event had thousands of people from every corner of the planet crowding the streets of this Latin American city, while world leaders held hectic discussions behind closed doors. It was the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). And the agenda set before the government negotiators was to build the foundation of a new climate agreement — to be struck in Paris next December and take effect in 2020 — that can have a meaningful effect on stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The outcome? While the official statement is still being worked on, a scientist, attending the negotiations, summed it up in a sentence. “We are going backwards,” said Alden Meyer, who monitors the climate negotiations for the Union of Concerned Scientists.