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World leaders struck an agreement three years ago in Paris to avert the worst effects of climate change, accepting not only that greenhouse gases were dangerously heating the planet, but also that every single country needed to do its part to curtail emissions.

Now, emissions are rising in the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies. Other countries are backsliding on their commitments. The world as a whole is not meeting its targets under the Paris pact. As diplomats meet in Katowice, Poland, this week to bring the deal into effect, the world’s 7.6 billion people face mounting risks from more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and wildfires.

The Paris Agreement, it seems, is only as good as the willingness of national leaders to keep their word.

“We have the ways,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said this week in Katowice. “What we need is the political will to move forward.”