From the NYTimes Monday Briefing email:
Representatives of 195 nations reached a landmark deal on Saturday that will commit almost every country to lowering planet-warming carbon emissions. It was six years in the making.
The tough task of delivering on those promises now begins, but scientists are optimistic because of the cooperative tone of the negotiations.
Seven concrete measures have been agreed to. And here’s what they mean for the planet, businesses and politics.
And here is Rob Stavins summary:
The Paris Agreement, a truly landmark climate accord, which was gaveled through today, December 12, 2015, at 7:26 pm (Paris time) at theTwenty-First Conference of the Parties (COP-21), checks all the boxes in my five-point scorecard for a potentially effective Paris Agreement, described in my November 17th blog essay, Paris Can Be a Key Step. ...
What is key in the Agreement is the following: the centrality of the [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions] structure (through which 186 countries representing 96% of global emissions have made submissions); the most balanced transparency requirements ever promulgated; provision for heterogeneous linkage, including international carbon markets (through “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” – ITMOs); explicit clarification in a decision that agreement on “loss and damage” does not provide a basis for liability of compensation; and 5-year periods for stocktaking and improvement of the INDCs. ...
Impacts on businesses will come largely not directly from the Paris Agreement, but from the policy actions that the various Parties undertake domestically in their respective jurisdictions to comply with the Paris Agreement. ...
So, in the case of the United States, for example, those policies that will enable the country to achieve its submitted INDC are: the Clean Power Plan (which will accelerate the shift in many states from coal to natural gas for electricity generation, as well as provide incentives in some states for renewable electricity generation.); CAFE (motor vehicle fuel efficiency) standards increasing over time (as already enacted by Congress); appliance efficiency standards moving up over time (as also already enacted by Congress); California’s very aggressive climate policy (AB-32); and the northeast states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
These various policies are credible, and they will send price signals that affect business decisions (but not across the board nor with ideal efficiency, as would a national carbon tax or a national carbon cap-and-trade system). ...
Unfortunately, the United States still has a ways to go in terms of even agreeing that human beings contribute to the climate change problem.
