With the champagne gone, now it's the hard work of rolling back emissions

After a champagne moment in Paris, where ministers from around the world crafted a pact to fight perilous climate change, comes the hard part.

Experts are under no illusion that celebrations and high-flown rhetoric are enough when it comes to rolling back greenhouse-gas emissions.

If anything, they say, the divisions that beleaguered the nearly two-week haggle have underscored the political and economic obstacles that now lie ahead.

The deal finally struck on Saturday, a day into extra time, enshrines the goal to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels—and at an even more ambitious 1.5C if possible.

But the bad news is that humanity may already have used up almost 1C of that allocation, the UN's World Meteorological Organization warned last month.

And the emissions-curbing pledges submitted by 185 countries to give the agreement substance, even if fully honoured, set the stage for a 3C warmer world.

Read the Phys.org story - “After Paris: Now what for world climate?”