Tokar begins this excellent review of the recent climate conference in Paris this way:
It has become a predictable pattern at the annual UN climate conferences for participants to describe the outcome in widely divergent ways. This was first apparent after the high-profile Copenhagen conference in 2009, when a four-page non-agreement was praised by diplomats, but denounced by well-known critics as a “sham,” a “farce,” and a mere face-saver. UN insiders proclaimed the divisive 2013 Warsaw climate conference a success, even though global South delegates and most civil society observers had staged an angry walk-out a day prior to its scheduled conclusion.He then launches into what we might expect in the future, but finally concludes with the observation that it will take much more than conferences and promises to turn around our trajectory that is headed straight toward climate destabilization.
So it was no surprise when this happened again on December 12th in Paris.
Clearly, it will require more than statements of ambitious climate goals to corral the overarching capitalist imperative to grow and expand, or even to rein in political pressures to keep diverting public funds to support fossil fuel corporations.
This, of course, is where the worldwide climate movement comes in.