Promises and perils of the Paris Agreement

A truly democratic global climate politics is needed In recent decades, climate change has increasingly been framed as a problem of the global mean temperature. This is reflected in the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal to keep the global mean surface temperature well below 2°C above the pre-industrial mean and, if possible, to limit the increase to 1.5°C. However, as temperatures continue to rise, these goals are quickly becoming less plausible. Climate science, politics, and activism thus stand to lose a familiar framing device. At the same time, the Paris Agreement has moved climate politics away from a decades-long commitment to centrally negotiated, legally binding emission reduction targets by introducing a democratic innovation: Under the Paris Agreement, member states decide individually, in the form of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), what actions they will commit to taking toward the common goal of climate risk reduction. This institutional innovation offers a much-needed source of democratic renewal for global climate politics.