The bottom line of the Paris Climate Summit is this: The world’s governments say they agreed to hold the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but in actuality committed to nearly double that. A potential runaway global warming still looms in the future.

The surprise of the summit, officially known as the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 21, was the decision to set a goal of limiting the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, instead of the previous target of 2 degrees. This was done at the behest of Pacific Island countries that might be submerged with a 2-degree rise, and the new, more ambitious target, if achieved, would provide a greater margin of error as a 2-degree rise is widely believed to be the limit at which catastrophic damage can be avoided.

How is the new goal to be achieved? Article 4 of the Paris Agreement, reached on December 12, states:

“In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal [of 1.5 degrees], Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. … Each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then current nationally determined contribution. … Developed country Parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets. Developing country Parties should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances.”

What mechanisms will be created to ensure that the “Parties” (national governments) to carry out these plans? They “shall” report their progress, “shall undergo a technical expert review” (article 13) and discuss their progress five years from now (article 14). Governments will develop technology (article 10) and will “build mutual trust” through “transparency” (article 13).

In other words, peer pressure is the mechanism. There are no binding legal agreements requiring any country to achieve the reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions pledged for the Paris Climate Summit.

Pledges equate to a tweak, not a reversal

A further problem is that should all the pledges actually be met, the increase in global temperatures will be about 2.7 degrees, according to Climate Action Tracker. The group, comprised of four research organizations that produce independent scientific analyses, calculates that fulfillment of the national pledges would result in an increase in the global temperature of 2.2 to 3.4 degrees C. (with a median of 2.7) by 2100, with further increases beyond that. Although Climate Action Tracker notes that this potential rise is less drastic than the nearly 4-degree rise that the world had been on course for prior to the Paris commitments, what has been accomplished is merely to slow the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The world’s governments have set various goals for reducing emissions by 2025 or 2030, with the European Union’s pledge of a 40 percent cut by 2030 the most ambitious among the biggest greenhouse-gas contributors. But the later that greenhouse-gas emissions are brought under control, the more difficult it will be to cap global warming at 1.5 or 2 degrees. A Climate Action Tracker analysis says:

“The need to fill in the gap between the projected [pledged] emissions levels in 2025 and the levels necessary to limit global warming to below 2°C means significantly more rapid, and costly, action would be needed compared to a situation where more ambitious targets for 2025 were adopted and where governments took immediate action now to achieve them. … Annual decarbonisation rates of 3-4%, which would be needed to catch up from 2025 [pledge] levels, are feasible, but the available modeling results indicate that such a reduction would result in much higher costs, more disruption, and more challenges than if action starts now and continues in a smooth way.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued last year foresees a rise in greenhouse-gas emissions for years to come, to above 450 parts per million, before falling to 450 ppm by 2100, which the report says is necessary to hold the global temperature rise to 2 degrees. Unfortunately, the IPCC report relies on several technological breakthroughs, including capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide, which is not yet close to being feasible.

In an analysis of the summit, Ian Angus and Phil Gasper explain this leap of faith:

“Almost all of the scenarios that show an increase of less than two degrees by 2100 require, first, much greater emissions reductions than anyone is proposing in the next 30 years. And then, after 2050, they require ‘negative emissions.’ That is, there would have to be some technology invented that takes carbon dioxide out of the air, and no such technology exists. And if it is invented, no one can say how it would function on a global scale, or whether it will be safe. It’s pure fantasy, and we can’t depend on fantasy.”

Worse, not all countries have necessarily even pledged to reduce their emissions. Writing in Climate & Capitalism, Jonathan Neale calculates that several countries, including China, India and Russia, have merely pledged to slow the rate of their increases in greenhouse-gas emissions, and other governments, such as the United States, European Union, Canada and Australia, have agreed to cut their emissions by one percent per year. He writes:

“[C]ountries like India and China promise to cut emissions in terms of carbon intensity. Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon in fossil fuels that is needed to produce the same amount of work. Carbon intensity has been going down in the United States for a hundred years. It is going down all over the world. This is because we learn to use coal, oil and gas more efficiently, just like we learn to use everything else in industry more productively. So a promise to cut carbon intensity is a promise to increase emissions.”

Pollution as a market commodity

Short-term profits are still given priority over the long-term health of the environment. One manifestation of this is that governments continue to rely on “cap and trade” schemes that make pollution a market commodity. Too many credits are provided for free, and as a result the prices for them have fallen drastically; and politically influential industries are often exempted, even if they are among the most polluting.

All the incentives in capitalism are for more growth, and the accumulation of power that accrues to corporations that grow the most enable large industry to bend laws and regulations to their liking. Stagnation in a capitalist economy causes persistent unemployment and other problems, as the past several years amply demonstrate. And that is before we get to the problem that nobody will be offering displaced workers new jobs should the polluting industries they work in be shut down or curtailed. Industry can say that any new restrictions on it will cost jobs, and rally working people behind them on that basis.

Professors Angus and Gasper, in their analysis of the Paris Climate Summit, stress the necessity of environmentalists working with labor:

“The fact is that workers don’t want to lose their jobs. Here in Canada, we have the phenomenon of people from some of the poorest parts of the country going to work in the Alberta Tar Sands. After six months or a year, they can go home, to a place where there are no jobs, and buy a house or a car, or pay off their debts. Telling those people ‘Don’t do that because you’re causing greenhouse gas emissions’ is just absurd. It’s a guaranteed way to turn working people against the environmental movement. Now again, unfortunately, we see a lot of that. I’ve heard greens argue that we shouldn’t even try to reach oil sands workers because they’re just part of the colonial-settler assault on First Nations territory. Which is true–so we have to win them away from doing that, not force them into a firmer alliance with their bosses. We need to find ways to work with the labor movement around the whole concept of a ‘just transition.’ That concept has come out of the international labor movement–that we realize the change in the economy is going to result in lost jobs, and nobody should suffer as a result. There should be jobs or full pay, free retraining and so on.”

A worthy goal indeed. But could such a program be accomplished under capitalism? It does not seem so. Professors Angus and Gasper note that such a goal won’t be won without a strong movement. But as capitalism is a system designed for private profit, achieved through the exploitation of working people, a strong movement would have to push beyond it, to a more humane, rational economic system.

Another factor to contend with is that the goals of the Paris Climate Summit, inadequate as they may be, will be null and void should the Trans-Pacific Partnership and/or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership be approved. These multi-national “free trade” agreements would enable corporations to sue to overturn laws that protect the environment, and provide further incentives for production to be moved around the world with an accompanying increase in fossil fuels used for transporting components and finished goods across longer supply chains. TPP rules codifying benefits for multi-national corporations are written in firm language, but there is no such language for environmental or health protections. The TTIP’s language will likely be no better. The TPP does not mention global warming once in its text.

The Paris Climate Summit has been an exercise in feeling good, with the world’s corporate-media reporters at risk of sore arms from all the back pats they are giving. A future world of uncontrollable climate change, with agricultural patterns disrupted and species dying at accelerating rates, won’t feel good, however. Business as usual won’t save the future; only mass mobilization on a global scale can.