Historic Paris agreement seen by some as 'historic failure'

NEW YORK – As establishment civil society groups and politicians gathered Friday morning to cheer the signing of the Paris Agreement as an “historic” achievement that will avert global catastrophe, a group of climate emergency protesters staged a “mass death” and collapse scenario outside the United Nations to demonstrate the reality of the future the agreement locks in.

The protesters acted out the collapse of global civilization that will occur if humanity remains on the Paris Agreement’s non-binding emissions trajectory toward a world 3.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial period.

More specifically, they enacted the mass starvations the agreement’s emissions trajectory would allow, erecting grave-stones for the nation-states that will collapse under the stress of extreme drought and water scarcity, and playing the government and civil society bureaucrats who pretend that the situation is under control and that business-as-usual reforms can protect humanity and the natural world.

Read the Climate Mobilization story - “Mobilizers denounce climate agreement as “historic”failure at United Nations signing ceremony.”

(The December Paris climate agreement is many things – among them, divisive.

A raft people have whooped and hollered in support of what happened in Paris, and then just recently in New York City with the signing of those agreements, arguing it was the first time the world community had aligned and agreed that climate change deserved international attention, and through the signing of those Paris agreements were going to get just that.

Others lament what happened in Paris, arguing that although the world’s nations may have acknowledged the trouble, their response was little more than hollow rhetoric and the warming of the world would continue unabated.

Yesterday, I listened to a fellow who appeared to be from the camp of the former, in that he was excited about what happened in Paris and armed with a barrage of numbers, demonstrated why the world could keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius pre-industrial temperatures.

I’m unsure, but I sensed that many in the audience (about 50 and including a couple of well-known climate scientists) did not appear to agree entirely with the speaker – Robert McLean).