Meanwhile: some politics...

The IPCC report was a hit worldwide. Every newspaper made a review of the main outcomes of the report (mainly that we have to stop fossil fuel emissions now). Citizens are becoming more and more aware of the threat presented to us nowadays and the important moment in which we stand. Our fate will depend on the decisions we make today.

If these decisions were to be made by the climate scientists, the world would surely be saved. The problem is the decisions are obviously made by politicians, who are primarily interested in economical or other types of growth.

A lot of treaties were made trying to address the problem of climate change, but they were never very successful. In December 2014 the last UN climate conference was held in Peru, where, for the first time, 196 countries made an agreement. Will these agreements solve the problem of climate change? Doubtfully.

So, what were the outcomes of this conference in Peru? What did the 196 countries agree to do? They all must, in the next six months, present some sort of plan describing how they are going to help fight climate change in the future. After this, a climate agreement will be signed in the end of 2015 in Paris, according to these plans so as to make them official.

The key concept of this conference: freedom. All countries will have total freedom on their "plan" to fight climate change. It can be as strict or as relaxed as they want it to be. Also, another key fact is that, after the Paris conference, if countries do not comply to their "plan", there will be no penalty.

If we observe previous agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, we could see that by being strict upon promises to be made, countries like China or India refused to sign. Also, others, like Canada, just abandoned the protocol when they realised they could not comply what they had agreed to. So, the freedom in the current Peru agreement could be the reason why we got 196 countries to agree.

Now, as political scientist David Victor said in 2008, we have to apply the "bottom up" technique. We have agreed in the bottom, i.e. the most relaxed of all possible agreements, with total freedom, but at least we are all together. This could be the start of some political improvement.






And these totally relaxed agreements will be signed in the end of 2015, and with no punishments if not complied...

...Meanwhile, the CO2 levels keep rising, and the clock keeps ticking...


Suddenly the geoengineering options seem better than they did before, don't you think? We might need it, and if that moment ever comes, we better be as prepared as possible.