The Guardian View On The UN Climate Change Treaty: Now For Some Action

The Guardian - Editorial

It was a spectacular signal of global intent on Friday when more than 170 governments signed up to the Paris deal. But it's just the start of a long, hard road 

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and actor Leonardo DiCaprio at the UN in New York on 22 April 2016. 'Now the gap between reality and the ambition of holding global warming below 2C needs addressing.' Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Media

The danger of gala events like the official signing of the climate change treaty at the UN in New York on Friday, crowned with a guest appearance from Leonardo DiCaprio and with 60 heads of state in attendance, is the impression they create that the job is done. It was certainly a spectacular demonstration of global intent to get more than 170 signatures on the deal agreed in Paris in December at the first time of asking; but what matters is making it legally binding. For that, it must be not just signed but ratified by at least 55 countries, and it must cover 55% of emissions. Nor does the Paris deal go far enough. It was only a step on a long, hard road. The targets that each country set themselves do not go nearly far enough. Now the gap between reality and the ambition of holding global warming below 2C needs addressing. In Churchillian rhetoric, this is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.

There are powerful reasons to pursue the Paris summit objective. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, each of the past 11 months was warmer than the 20th-century average. Nasa statistics showed that 2015 was even hotter than the previous record-setting year of 2014. Yet despite the way the evidence is stacking up, political leaders in polluting countries continue to argue about whether and how fast they need to act. In the US, President Barack Obama's climate plan has hit trouble in the supreme court, where the regulation of emissions from coal-fired plants has been blocked. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate for the presidency, is pledged to continue Mr Obama's commitment to tackling emissions, but her probable rival, Donald Trump, is certainly not. The US and China are committed to ratifying the climate change treaty, but for others, such as India, it may be more complicated.
In the UK, 10 years after David Cameron hugged that husky, his record is in tatters. Not only has "the green crap" been whittled back by big cuts in subsidies and incentives that have left solar power, onshore and even offshore wind all less attractive, but policies to limit emissions have been repeatedly portrayed as harmful to the economy. High energy costs have been widely blamed for the crisis in British steel. Yet, while it is true that energy prices are higher than elsewhere in Europe – partly because of climate change programmes and partly because of the fragmented nature of the privatised industry largely beyond government control – they are mitigated by compensation. As fact-checkers point out, for steel, actual energy costs amount to around just 1% of total manufacturing costs. The double whammy of an uncompetitive currency and a slump in global demand are the real problems that Tata and other steelmakers are facing. Energy costs get the blame because that's where the government might have real traction.
As divestment lobbies chalk up triumph after triumph, there are signs of parallel trends. In the past few days, Norway's sovereign wealth fund has pulled out of scores of companies for being over-reliant on fossil fuel, and the Rockefeller Foundation has divested from fossil fuel entirely. Yet governments still resist the commitment to greening their economies that will turn the Paris deal from an exercise in global cooperation to a watershed for global warming.

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