The Paris climate agreement consists of 12 pages and is accompanied by 19 pages of decisions that list all options to be implemented or developed under this new agreement. It will have consequences in various international agreements, from trade to agriculture, sustainable development, humanitarian aid, etc. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the implementation and continuation of negotiations on the development of solutions will continue each year. Nevertheless, according to the authors, «emissions are still increasing rapidly, with increasingly harmful effects on the earth`s climate. A huge increase in efforts to preserve our biosphere is needed to avoid immeasurable suffering due to the climate crisis. If Trump is re-elected, the treaty is likely to fail. The rest of the world will simply not continue to bear its ambitions and costs, while the United States follows a trajectory of climate universarism. But even if it is not, the absence of an American climate leader, which is now practically a sustainable state, will deprive the agreements of one of its central engines. Yes, there is broad consensus within the scientific community, although some deny that climate change is a problem, including politicians in the United States. When negotiating teams meet for international climate talks, «there is less skepticism about science and more disagreement about how to set priorities,» said David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego. The basic science is this: the gap between what has been promised and what is being done will only widen. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) calculates in its annual «emission deficit» report that, in the 2020s, the difference between what countries have promised and what is needed to limit warming to 2 degrees is 13 to 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

By comparison, light commercial vehicles in the United States emit about one billion tonnes of CO2 per year. Think of the U.S. auto industry… 15 times. According to the report, nearly two-thirds of the commitments made under the Paris climate agreement are «totally insufficient» to meet critical climate targets, according to the report of scientists who participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One thing is certain: this agreement will not be enough to limit the average temperature of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, let alone the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature that the agreement itself considers necessary. However, for domestic policy reasons in most countries and in the current geopolitical reality, this is the best deal we have been able to reach. That is why we cannot place all our hope in such an international agreement and action must be taken at all levels at which we are all involved. Second, in recent months, negotiators have publicly stated that INDCs are conservative and therefore slightly increased. This is mainly due to the lack of time to prepare them and for the first time for the majority of countries doing this exercise. The new mechanism adopted in Paris provides for a dynamic revision of these plans every 5 years from 2023, i.e. in 8 years! In 2018, there will be only one «dialogue» that will call on all countries to reduce their initial plans, but this may be too late, as current emissions will keep global temperatures rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2020.

Although there is legislation that does not concern the regressions of future national mitigation plans and a number of rules to follow at the presentation, they are only indicative and are not part of a legally binding mechanism, with an international court of justice and other legal measures. This ratt-up mechanism is too voluntary, which creates too much uncertainty and gives way to the dynamics of the race-down, as soon as a country with sufficient power decides not to comply.