The Paris Agreement Cannot Save Us

A year ago, I wrote about negotiations on the implementation of the Paris Agreement’s carbon market held during the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s midyear meeting of its Subsidiary Bodies. The outlook for climate action was positive, and parties were working together to advance global cooperation to fight climate change.

However, in the intervening time, progress fell apart, and the convention has almost completely stalled. The most notable challenges include:

President Donald Trump declared that the Paris Agreement does “not reflect our country’s values”;
Brazil ramped up deforestation in the Amazon ahead of its hosting of the UNFCCC’s 30th Conference of the Parties (COP);

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Saudi Arabia lobbied to remove reference to fossil fuels negotiating texts, which was just one stop on its world tour to water down COP28’s landmark decision to “transition away” from fossil fuels;
The European Union, seen as the most climate-ambitious group of developed countries, quietly expanded natural gas infrastructure under the guise of “green transition.”

This year in Bonn, it became clear that the challenges we face are not the carbon market’s rules, the climate finance’s quantum, or the global goal on adaptation’s indicators. Instead, it is that the Paris Agreement cannot save us. It cannot save us when the world’s historically largest emitter declares the agreement does “not reflect our country’s values.” It cannot save us when countries are diverting spending to go to war. And it certainly cannot save us when, in contravention to the outcome of the first global stocktake (2023), fossil-fuel phase-out isn’t even in the time horizon. OPEC’s latest report indicated that fossil fuel demand won’t peak until 2050.

2050 was supposed to be an important milestone for the fight against climate change. It was supposed to be when the world would go net zero, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to remain consistent with the 1.5 degree C goal in the Paris Agreement. The European Union, California, and a smattering of private corporations and other governmental entities set targets commensurate with that goal. Instead, the World Meteorological Organization has confirmed the 1.5 degree C goal was breached in 2024, with the Paris Agreement’s worst-case scenario goal of 2 degrees C not far behind.

In reality, 2050 will be a milestone in the destruction of the human environment and its society. Instead of a successful green transition, the world will face hazardous shifts in weather patterns and environmental conditions, including more frequent and intense extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, and floods, rising sea levels, and disruptions to agriculture and human health.

Warming is locked in, not just scientifically but politically—as there is no global will for long-term decision making in line with a net zero goal. Instead, as warming accelerates, countries will have even less incentive to take climate action as the cost of mitigation and adaptation rapidly increases. This will be accompanied by societal decay, as human fabric breaks down at the global and local level.

I saw that on display in Bonn, where countries retrenched into their national positions, driven by the United States’ withdrawal from the process and warnings of increasingly accelerating climate risks. Gone was the atmosphere of collective ambition that characterized previous meetings. This will have impacts across the multilateral system, affecting cooperation in the Convention for Biodiversity, the Sustainable Development Goals, and negotiations on the Plastics Treaty.

The true test of the multilateral response to climate change is whether they uplifted the human condition. A world more prosperous, less unequal; without mass destruction—not just of the environmental kind but of humankind. My hope is diminished—and unless the international community transforms its approach, the Paris Agreement, as implemented, will not save us.