The most powerful members of society belonged to this family. After many years of internal contention due external pressures, they engendered an offspring. Due to the family’s preeminence and power, the rather vacuous offspring came to be much celebrated. There was much a-do about nothing.
I felt the need to poorly personify the Paris agreement, just to make lucid how poorly fruitful the agreement was. The time, effort and resources used to produce it were all but effectual. After analyzing and scrutinizing the particulars of the Paris Agreement, one can conclude that the most prominent achievement of the Paris climate agreement is perhaps, that there was an agreement at all.
We have been lingering in an old paradigm for a long time. It was over 2 decades ago, in 1992 that the UN officially acknowledged the hazards of greenhouse gasses, and the greenhouse effect. It in turn adopted the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It has been an annual reoccurrence since 1994, that the members of the convention “meet in one place, call for reports, work out procedures, discuss and bicker and walk out on each other, able to do much except the one, crucial thing: formulate a global resolution that would slow and eventually halt climate change” (Meyer)
To my mind, climate change is our modus operandi. The great story of the 21st century man. No other narrative enshrouds the human race in quite similar a manner. Climate change forces answers about: the ethics of the global economy, of oil and gas, of technology and innovation, of food security, of democratic republics and command capitalism, of colonialism, dictatorships and the indigenous peoples, of who is rich and powerful and who is poor and voiceless.
We are living in the middle of history. As countries continue to have conflicts over boarders, increase investment in weapons of mass destruction, and abominate refugees in their midst. In Paris, they tried, miraculously and inadequately, to care for their common good. (Meyer)
So, if climate change does pique your curiosity, and you too feel worried about our not so distant future, then make an effort. Its individuals who make the government, the state and the nation. It may sound clichéd, but individual action leads to collective action. We cannot expect a piece of paper to miraculously save us from a mess we’ve been making for years. We cannot stagnate and continue to cling to models of the past, because the future is now. We need to show concern for our environment in the way we vote, in the way we spend our civic attention and in the way we communicate our concerns to the policy makers. We have been having the same discourse of the ruination of our environment and the depletion of our scarce resources. We need to act. Fast.
References
Corbyn, Chloe. “The Paris Agreement on Climate Change – A Summary.” In Brief. Assemblywales.org, 04 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
Meyer, Robinson. “Is Hope Possible After the Paris Agreement?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 12 Dec. 2015. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
