As Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss might have said, the Paris Agreement on climate change that was adopted by the United States and nearly 200 other countries on Dec. 12, 2015, was the best of all possible agreements, at least for now. While the Paris Agreement contains virtually no binding commitments by anyone, it does reflect a new international consensus that all nations, both developed and developing, must act aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to try to hold average global warming (now seen as inevitable) to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over the pre-industrial level. In the aftermath of this agreement, discussion has properly focused on the difficulty of achieving that goal when the most ambitious—and by no means assured—promises by the world leading emitters fall far short of the required GHG reductions.

Even if all those promises are actually kept, the world appears on course for a temperature increase approaching 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. To meet the Paris goal of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the United States, Europe, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and other major GHG emitters will need to aim for substantially greater GHG reductions than are currently on any of their agendas.

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