The conceptual breakthrough behind the Paris climate treaty

The Paris climate treaty is, in Joe Biden’s immortal phrase, “a big f’ing deal.” It is less a solution to the problem of climate change — as everyone has already pointed out, it’s only the beginning — than a conceptual breakthrough, a shift in the way the world’s countries approach their common task.

That core breakthrough has gotten somewhat lost in all the coverage of the details. So I’d like to pull back the lens a bit and look at the big picture, what Paris means in the larger arc of climate action.

When climate change was discovered — or rather, when it became incontrovertibly clear that it was a threat — in the late 1980s, a class of scientists and environmentalists, seized with a sense of peril and mission, set about forcing the world to acknowledge and address it. Because it was a global problem, the idea was that a globally binding treaty could be forged within the UN and enforced on all participating countries. Visions of the Montreal Protocol, which successfully rallied the international community to protect the ozone layer, danced in their heads.

As the threat became more grave, and it became clearer that restricting warming to 2 degrees or less would require radical carbon reductions in virtually every country, reformers became ever more fixated on a sweeping treaty, a solution that matched the scale of the problem.

To be just and effective, it was thought, such a treaty must have two key features. First, it must assign the bulk of the work and expense to developed nations, which were responsible for most of the cumulative global carbon emissions to date. And second, it must contain science-based, legally binding emission targets for each developed nation.

The reasoning seemed perfectly sound, even as it failed, year after year after year, to produce a durable agreement.

In retrospect, the high point of the original strategy was the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and went into force in 2005. Its targets were woefully inadequate, but it was global, and binding, at least on developed countries.

Except the US Senate promptly voted 95-0 not to ratify it and in 2001 George W. Bush withdrew the US entirely. A number of the countries that did sign it, notably Canada and Australia, failed to meet their targets, with no apparent penalty. And China, free from any restraints, sent its emissions soaring on the back of a coal-fueled growth binge, catching up to the US to become the world’s top emitter. Arguably, Kyoto made no difference to global emissions at all.

Even as the basic architecture failed produce the global shift needed, the UNFCCC clung to it: targets must be legally binding, but only developed nations must adopt them. The US resisted signing on to legally binding targets. China resisted giving up its developing nation status. Other countries dug into various camps and refused to budge.

All this came to a head in Copenhagen, in 2009, when sky-high expectations crashed into the the intractable stalemate over treaty architecture. It was only salvaged from complete failure by last-minute maneuvering from Obama.

Copenhagen was widely deemed a fiasco. In addiction terms, the UNFCCC hit rock bottom. But as often happens in addiction narratives, rock bottom marked a turning point, a realization among many (though not all) participants in the UNFCCC that the originally envisioned deal architecture was never to be. A new strategy was needed.

First, the neat dichotomy between developed and developing nations no longer corresponds to reality. Countries are in various states of development (or, in Greece for example, backslide). China still lags behind in per-capita income and emissions, but is the biggest emitter and is rapidly catching up on cumulative emissions.

More to the point, there is simply no credible way to address climate change that doesn’t involve substantial participation by all the world’s high-emitting countries, including China, India, Brazil, and other rising nations. It cannot be done if they won’t help do it. So however it is phrased or framed, developing nations must commit to action as well.

Second, whatever the high ideals of the UNFCCC process and the liberal internationalists who drive it, in this fallen world, nation states rule. Nations make policy. Common global aspirations, targets, and even treaties are impotent without policies at the national level.

And nations are ultimately going to act based on what they view as their own best interests. No UN treaty, “binding” or not, can force them to do otherwise. The UNFCCC has only the power member states grant it, and they haven’t granted it that power.

These realizations have led to a more sober assessment of what is possible for an international climate treaty. Pending the UNFCCC being given power to police scofflaws and levy penalties, the starting point has to be voluntary national policies. What can a UN treaty do to give those policies some structure, efficacy, and momentum?

Broadly speaking, it can offer two things: transparency and moral suasion.

It can aggregate the voluntary national commitments into a common database and measure them by common metrics, so that they can be fairly compared. It can make sure each nation’s progress is verified and made public. If done well, transparency can ensure that everyone is clear on who has made what commitments and whose commitments are and aren’t being met.

Alongside transparency, a treaty can bring to bear the weight of shared principles and goals: to help poorer countries, to drive emissions to net zero by mid-century, and to limit temperature rise to “well below 2C.” It can put nations on record behind not only specific policies but a promise to regularly review and strengthen those policies. And it can put them on record behind specific contributions to a fund to assist poor and low-lying nations.

That’s the architecture of the Paris deal.

Ultimately, it relies on the only real weapons in the UNFCCC’s arsenal: perception and peer pressure. The bet is that nations will behave differently when a) no one is telling them what to do, but b) everyone is watching. Social scientists know that for individuals, making goals public is one of the most effective ways of ensuring they’re met. Perhaps the same is true of nations.

If the last two years are any indication, peer pressure works pretty well. After China and the US struck a bilateral deal, other countries had no political cover left for delay; virtually every one came to Paris with real commitments in hand.

By all accounts, Paris was a smoother and more congenial experience than previous climate talks, with fewer leaks, less sniping, and more flexibility. India, previously a determined foot-dragger, has emerged as a constructive partner and potential solar pioneer. Canada came out of nowhere supporting a 1.5 degree target. Hell, even Venezuela submitted an INDC. It was, for the first time in a long time, a unanimous and forward-looking agreement, an architecture that showed signs of being durable and effective over decades to come.

There’s a real sense that the world has crested the hill; action is now rolling on, unstoppable. And as Michael Levi notes, that optimism, the impression of inevitability, may be the most important outcome of Paris.

Nonetheless, nations remain primary. All the talk about whether the Paris treaty will “work” somewhat misses that point.

The UNFCCC has always been, and remains, subject to the vicissitudes of national politics. The main reasons nations have finally started coming together on climate have less to do with international negotiations than with the changing economics of energy, the surge in public interest, and the rising tide of global activism.

And the nascent unity could easily falter. If internal tensions and austerity weaken the EU’s commitment; if India’s massive solar push goes bust; if demographics or politics change the incentives of Chinese leaders; above all, if the climate denialists in the Republican Party gain control of the White House — any of these national developments could delay or derail cooperative global action on climate. And there’s little a UN treaty can do to prevent them.

What the Paris architecture can do is rationalize a process that is already underway and, at the margins, accelerate it. It can clarify shared aspirations, send clear market signals, and document ongoing progress, fostering a positive feedback cycle of ambition. It can serve as a reminder that the family of nations owes its poorest members a helping hand, and that current commitments fall far short of just or wise.

But it cannot impose or engineer a global energy transition. It is a reflection of national politics more than a driver. The architecture will grow stronger when and if countries become comfortable and confident on the path toward decarbonization. Whether that happens depends on forces far larger than the UN.