And in the history books it shall be written, “It was on the twelfth day of the twelfth month in the year of 2015 when the first bells of the fossil fuel industry’s death knell were rung. These modest yet historic notes sang out in the streets of Paris and the chambers of a converted old airport 15 minutes to the north, their sound a certain and clear message to generations young, old, and unborn. Delivered by both the will of the people and the ratification of the world’s most important environmental treaty to date, the music marked a turning point in the arc of mankind. Hope was officially part of the equation again … ”
Just moments before 7:30 p.m. Paris time on Saturday, with a simple swing of his gavel, COP21 President and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius brought to a close the business end of the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference at Le Bourget conference center. And with it, the ratification of the “Paris Agreement,” a historic and binding international treaty between nearly 200 countries aimed squarely at the long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
A two-pronged bit of legislation, the 12-page Agreement and it’s accompanying 19-page “Decision” pledge — among other things — to keep Planet Earth’s temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, to achieve global carbon emission neutrality by the middle of the century, to revisit and review national-level progress on these efforts every five years starting in 2018 (The Agreement becomes effective in 2020), and to stake a $100 billion annual Global Climate Fund as a means for helping the more vulnerable and less fiscally fortunate developing nations of our world as they battle climate chaos in the years ahead.