We'll always have Paris

Has it really been 10 years? For many of those who were there in Paris on that Saturday evening a decade ago the memories remain vivid, the sense of history being done having only become more entrenched in the ensuing years, even as the values of co-operation and humanity celebrated that night have taken a fearful battering. Right from the moment the gavel came down it felt like a critically important moment in the long arc of human history, and it remains so, despite the cynical, complacent, and corrupt efforts to renege on the agreement reached in the French capital. 

Reading back over some of the reporting from that dramatic weekend, it is evident that for all the celebration that an agreement had been reached after weeks of knife edge negotiations, there was little triumphalism. French President Francois Hollande may have called it "the most beautiful and most peaceful revolution", but most leaders recognised the accord was the start of something, rather than its culmination. As was so often the case Barack Obama put it best, when he observed that "we may not live to see the full realisation of our achievement - but that's okay". 

There was an understanding from the start that the system of voluntary national climate action plans that underpins the treaty and which was necessary to deliver a consensus, meant progress towards the goal of reaching net zero global emissions during the second half of the century would always ebb and flow. The whole thing was designed to work through a mix of peer pressure and soft power, and it was recognised that these are levers certain countries could and would choose to ignore.   

You would have even got short odds on the US being the first country to quit the treaty, given the Republican's long-history of nihilistic climate denialism - a trend that was engrained well before President Trump supercharged it by marrying scientific illiteracy to his noxious cocktail of conspiracism, narcissism, and nationalism. 

Consequently, it is possible to look back on the past decade and argue the Paris Summit has delivered on much of its promise. According to a fascinating new analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) released to coincide with today's 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement being adopted, 92 per cent of the global economy has now decoupled emissions from economic growth, up from 77 per cent a decade ago. 

The share of the economy that has reached absolute decoupling, resulting in real world emissions reductions even as economies grow, has risen from 38 per cent to 46 per cent over the period. And the number of countries achieving absolute decoupling has risen from 32 before the landmark climate accord to 43 in the decade since, Meanwhile, the number achieving relative decoupling, where emissions are rising slower than economic growth, has climbed from 35 to 40. All around the world in economies of all types, the model for delivering deep decarbonisation is now well established and is being shown to unlock multiple benefits. 

Almost all the world's industrialised economies and many leading emerging economies are now cutting their emissions each year, even as they have got richer and more productive. The Asian superpowers of China and India are still seeing their emissions rise, but at a much slower rate than their economic growth. It is notable that China's economic success has occurred at the same time as it has become the economy most visibly committed to adopting clean technologies at pace and scale. Thanks in large part to China's manufacturing prowess, clean tech markets are booming almost everywhere and solar is now the cheapest form of power in human history. No one has seen fit to follow Trump out of the Paris Agreement. There is a broad expectation global emissions will peak in the next few years, providing a physical manifestation of what the Paris accord set out to achieve. The centre is holding - just.

It is, of course, possible to offer a much more despairing assessment of the past decade. Global emissions are still rising and while temperature projections now suggest the world will see around 2.5C of warming this century, as opposed to the 3.5C+ predicted before Paris, the goal of limiting warming to 'well below' 2C slips further out of reach with each year. The risk of collapsing natural carbon sinks and runaway warming is real enough to make anyone who understands the science weep for what might be coming. 

Meanwhile, Paris is now seen as a high watermark for multilateralism. The agreement had required a superhuman effort to corral nearly 200 countries behind a deal, not to mention a remarkable confluence of positive economic trends, clean tech cost reduction curves, trillion dollar investments, political personalities, geopolitical stability, French diplomacy, and phone calls from the Pope. The whole delicate construction was built on shifting geopolitical sands and in the face of a storm of vested interests and ultranationalist politics right from the start.

It was always going to face the most severe of setbacks and now Trump's mafia-inspired approach to diplomacy and the naked warlordism of some of the petrostates threatens to torch the entire endeavour. It is entirely possible the Paris Agreement ends up being remembered as a brave failure, the last gasp of post-war multilateral idealism before the world succumbed to a great game of violent national self-interest against the backdrop of ever-worsening climate breakdown.  

And yet, for now the agreement persists and hop remains. The ideals of trust, co-operation, science, innovation, and shared self-interest that were embedded in the Paris treaty are still there and are still valued by billions of people worldwide. There is still a broad understanding that climate change could be catastrophic for humanity, and the only way to avert disaster is to work together to build something better and more resilient for the next generation. There is more evidence than ever before that it is not only possible to build a net zero emission and nature positive economy, but it can be done in a way that makes everyone happier, healthier, more secure, and more prosperous. The arguments to the contrary look more ridiculous by the day, only partly because they are being espoused by people who have proven themselves morally bankrupt to an almost comical degree.    

My first son was just eight months old at the time of the Paris Summit. One of the reasons my memories of that week are so clear is it was the first time I was away from him. He is now 10 and preparing to head to secondary school next year. He has grown up in an era of pandemics and wars that makes the world feel more dangerous than at any point since the end of the Second World War. The social media we try to insulate him and his brother from is filled with the most ancient hatreds, while AI promises to deny him the chance of ever finding a job. Some of the richest and most powerful people to have ever existed have made it their life's work to roll back the Enlightenment.    

And yet it is also a world where coal power is gone from the UK and where clean tech innovations that were once found only in science fiction books have been made real. Where land is being rewilded, renewables are both ubiquitous and entirely normal, and AI promises to turbocharge productivity after decades of stagnation. It is an age where clean technologies are booming and geopolitics are being remade by the fossil fuel demand destruction that results. An era where large majorities are well aware of the threats we all face and are committed to building a better and more resilient economy in response. This progress may have triggered a backlash, but it continues to advance.

The Paris Agreement has enabled that progress, and it will continue to do so. That is why it will be remembered for decades, if not centuries to come, regardless of what happens next. It has already helped build the foundations for a net zero emission and climate resilient economy. It is now up to us to push global emissions to a peak and deliver the next phase of the mission agreed in Paris. The beautiful and peaceful revolution continues.