Read carefully Section 9. 4 of the textbook before making any effort to respond to this question.

Question:

Read carefully Section 9. 4 of the textbook before making any effort to respond to this question. Since the signing of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, many international climate conventions have come and gone. What exactly these United Nations-led climate treaties have actually accomplished is still an open question.

Some would like to argue that the main contributions of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol over the past decade have been the persistence by which the UNFCCC, through the work of the Conference of the Parties (COP), has been able to: (1) raise the level of awareness of the world community to the real threat of climate change, and (2) engage world leaders in dialogues that have been carefully designed to confront climate change. What has been really lacking is the will of the world leaders to act.

Others have taken the position that the accomplishments of the UNFCCC since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 have been disappointingly dismal. While the urgency of the problem may require bold, immediate, and substantive action in the reductions of global GHG emissions, the UN-led climate change treaties, despite their ambitious goals, have yet to yield a breakthrough in the climate-change negotiations. Given this reality, it seems extraordinarily unfortunate that a quarter of a century has passed with no substantive and effectively binding agreements in climate negotiations.

Take a side and provide arguments for your chosen position. Depending on the position you have taken in this debate, what factors do you think contributed to the slow or even, as some claim, no progress in climate change negotiations? Be specific.

Do you think the world has learned enough from past mistakes to make the Paris Climate Agreement a success? What is the basis for your hope or despair?

Data from Section 9.4