"WORLD LEADERS INK PACT!"

Sorry, some sportswriting broke out there for a moment. We continue.

The deal was struck in a rare show of near-universal accord, as poor and wealthy nations from across the political and geographic spectrum expressed support for measures that require all to take steps to battle climate change. The agreement binds together pledges by individual nations to cut or limit emissions from fossil-fuel burning, within a framework of rules that provide for monitoring and verification as well as financial and technical assistance for developing countries. The overarching goal is to bring down pollution levels so that the rise in global temperatures is limited to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages. Delegates added language that expressed an ambition to restrict the temperature increase even further, to 1.5 degrees C, if possible.

As Bill McKibben points out, this deal could have gone further than it does. But, as McKibben also points out, the very fact of the treaty itself is cause for celebration. At the very least, some people got together and talked the Earth and its people—and, perhaps, even their politicians, although I expect no miracles—off the ledge, for the moment, anyway. The representatives of the world's governments got together and agreed that the climate crisis is real and that is largely caused by human beings who burn fossil fuels. What that means is that ignorance is no longer an excuse. What that means is that, on the world stage, anyway, you can't duck your responsibility because you're "not a scientist." Hereafter, anyone who denies the basic science of climate change, or who stands athwart the attempts to resolve the crisis, is cast as a traitor to his species, and to all the others as well. If you don't think that's a big deal, then watch the way this treaty is discussed on Tuesday night at the next Republican presidential debate.

One question, of course, is that of urgency, and there McKibben departs from the celebration a little bit early. Despite the misgivings of environmentalists, the stated goals of the treaty are ambitious, and they brook no delay. McKibben likens it to the difference between running a marathon simply to finish and running a marathon competitively.

What it requires is devoting yourself single-mindedly to the task. You don't get to drink beer with dinner and run a three-hour marathon. You don't get to skip training days. You go to bed early every night, because you're bone-tired. You have to run even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Translated into carbon terms: you don't get to go drilling or mining in new areas, even if you think it might make you lots of money. The Arctic will have to be completely off limits, as will the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. The pre-salt formations off Brazil, and the oil off the coasts of north America too. You've got to stop fracking right away (in fact, that may be the greatest imperative of all, since methane gas does its climate damage so fast). You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it. At the moment the world has no real plan to do any of those things.

I am not looking forward to how this agreement is going to be received by the current management of the United States Congress. Neither am I looking forward to what's going to happen to it once it gets dumped into the woodchipper of a presidential campaign in which many of the candidates are wholly owned subsidiaries of the very industries this agreement most directly affects. (Here's some instant piddling from America's foremost journal of white supremacy.) But the world and its leaders are on record now in agreement that the most cataclysmic "economic consequence" of all is waking up one morning and finding your corporate headquarters under water. That is more than something. It could be the beginning of everything. It all depends on how much you trust the one species living on earth allegedly capable of reasoning itself into its ultimate survival.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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