President Obama asserts that the United Nations Paris Agreement is “the first time so many countries had committed to ambitious, nationally determined climate targets.”
Yet the likelihood that China and other “developing country Parties,” the source of most of today’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, will keep their targets is essentially nil. They don’t have to, according to the U.N. itself.
The Paris Agreement starts:
“The Parties to this Agreement,
- Being Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC]…
- In pursuit of the objective of the [UNFCCC] Convention, and being guided by its principles…”
The UNFCCC, signed by world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is the foundation upon which all U.N. climate agreements, including that reached in Paris and signed at the U.N. on April 22, are based.
Article 4 of the UNFCCC states:
“The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.”
This means that, under treaties based on the UNFCCC, developing nations will keep their emission reduction commitments provided we pay them enough and give them enough of our technology.
