Kevin Bhimani 3/10/17 Blog #7
By spending some time after class and really thinking about what we did, I decided to make this blog post about the Paris Agreement. The obvious answer when you think of something like the Paris Agreement, a multi-national agreement on climate change detailing the future of our world in terms of actionable items by the member countries—you would think that the actual document itself would be almost unreadable by your average citizen. But it is just the opposite. The actual Paris Agreement is almost trivial, looking like something that we could have came up with in class as opposed to a masterfully synthesized piece of international legislation. By going over it article by article, one can quickly see that there is nothing in the actual piece that calls to any tangible action items, rather most of the rhetoric is along the lines of “we should be doing this” and “these countries should invest in this and that”. Even the Pope, who has published his own encyclical, Laudato Si, on climate change praised the “historic” agreement. In my opinion, it is likened to more of a recommendation document than something that has been hailed as a transformative agreement to our society as a whole. This is incredibly concerning for the future of our planet as we see our world leaders coming together and producing effectively nothing. Nothing for countries to be held accountable for, nothing specifically delineating steps that countries will be taking, just a few general takeaways to maybe put in motion, maybe not. Even if President Trump wants to abandon the Paris Agreement, will it do anything? I think that reading this has made it clear that although I still believe the best way to get true change to occur for our planet is through institutions such as our government, we can not trust them to actually make that effort. As people, we have to recognize the problem and ensure that the fate of our collective home is in our hands. With or without the support of our respective governments, we need to take steps sustain what we have.
Sources:
https://cruxnow.com/life/2015/12/14/pope-francis-praises-historic-paris-climate-change-agreement/
