Chances improve for a 1.5°C goal being included in the Paris climate pact. But will it be serious?

At the beginning of the second week of climate negotiations in Paris, there’s some optimism in the air—with good reason, although there is still a long way to go in settling major issues before a climate agreement is produced. And, of course, even the best climate agreement that comes out of the COP21 talks only matters if the signatories take it seriously, enforcing whatever parts are binding—which might be none—and sticking to their pledges to cut CO₂ emissions as stated in their  Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC).

Optimism is certainly not everyone’s view, as you can see in this highly critical essay. But even with the hundred or more caveats that can be raised, we’re not where we were at this stage of the Copenhagen talks. Tyler Hamilton reports:  

It’s not often that Greenpeace signals it’s “optimistic” about United Nations-led climate talks, but significant progress is being made compared to the Copenhagen summit in 2009, the environmental group said over COP21’s weekend break.

“At this point in Copenhagen we were dealing with a 300-page text and a pervasive sense of despair,” said Martin Kaiser, head of international climate politics at Greenpeace. “In Paris, we’re down to a slim 21 pages and the atmosphere remains constructive.”

One encouraging sign is that more than 100 nations favor an agreement designed to hold average worldwide temperature increases to 1.5°C (2.7°F) instead of the 2°C (3.6°F) that has been the stated goal of most climate scientists leading climate negotiators for nearly 20 years. The two-degree figure is one that most scientists say would avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But many island nations would cease to exist from the expected sea-level rise resulting from a temperature rise of 2°C.