Nearly 200 Countries Agree On Global Climate Pact Rules After Impasse (reuters.com)

"Nearly 200 countries overcame political divisions late on Saturday to agree on rules for implementing a landmark global climate deal," reports Reuters. "After two weeks of talks in the Polish city of Katowice, nations finally reached consensus on a more detailed framework for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels." From the report: Before the talks started, many expected the deal would not be as robust as needed. The unity which underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented, and U.S. President Donald Trump intends to pull his country - one of the world's biggest emitters - out of the pact. At the 11th hour, ministers managed to break a deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the accounting rules for the monitoring of carbon credits, deferring the bulk of that discussion to next year, but missing an opportunity to send a signal to businesses to speed up their actions. Still, exhausted ministers managed to bridge a series of divides to produce a 156-page rulebook - which is broken down into themes such as how countries will report and monitor their national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and update their emissions plans.

Not everyone is happy with everything, but the process is still on track and it is something to build on, several ministers said. Some countries and green groups criticized the outcome for failing to urge increased ambitions on emissions cuts sufficiently to curb rising temperatures. Poorer nations vulnerable to climate change also wanted more clarity on how an already agreed $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 will be provided and on efforts to build on that amount further from the end of the decade.

Comments

Re:No details?

[AmiMoJo]

The agreement is legally binding. It sets out how countries will meet their climate goals, and how poorer countries will get financial assistance to do it. For example it sets up rules on carbon trading between richer and poorer nations. It also sets out the legal consequence for climate change and how they will be enforced, and the way that compliance will be measured.

Re:Chile banned plastic bags too

[SumDog]

Some of those bags, a tiny fraction, are used for carrying lunches or taking out trash or whatever. Most just find their way to landfills. Now you have to intentionally buy the bags you're specifically going to use. I see that as a win. Go boo hoo back to "I hate change" shack.

Re:No details?

[Anonymous Coward]

The agreement is as legally binding as the Kellogg-Briand pact.

From what I can tell, there are no actual new commitments. The existing non-binding Paris agreement targets remain nominally in-effect.
The new agreement provides advice on how a country should self-measure their emissions such that the measurement procedures have some consistency to them.
However, if a country decides to not to follow that advice, there is literally nothing that will be done about it.
Furthermore, if they measure the emissions properly, but emissions are in excess of the Paris agreement emissions targets, there is literally nothing that will be done about that either.
Furthermore, none of reports have to be delivered until 2024, at the earliest.

This is what I was able to tell based on some articles I found. As for all I can tell the text of the actual agreement is secret and no one has ever read it, not even those who wrote or signed it.

If this is not the case, and you have access to either the agreement or a decent summary thereof, you would have posted it already.

Re:No details?

[AmiMoJo]

The agreement requires countries to submit data on their compliance to the UN. It states how such data is to be collected. They rules are designed to prevent cheating and of course countries will monitor each other, e.g. any country with climate science satellites or nearby ground stations can tell if there is cheating going on.

Every country must set targets regularly and they must always be lower than the previous ones.

Enforcement is via the usual UN mechanisms. So for example when the UN enacts sanctions they are widely respected and cause the subject of the sanctions great problems and economic loss. In this case it would probably not be sanctions but would be justification for tariffs or international lawsuits or complaints through the WTO.

In theory a country could just decide to not go along with the agreement. Well, the US already pulled out of Paris. But in practice there will be consequences, and as we have seen in the past countries do tend to make a genuine effort to comply and meet their goals (including China which exceeded its last very aggressive target, and even the US which is being driven by states despite the federal government's position).

Put it another way, if you think people and nations only behave well because they are forced to by law and the threat of legal sanction or military force then you must not have looked at recent history.

Re:Ha. Poor countries agree to loot the rich

[whoever57]

Yellow jackets. That increase in fuel taxes to fund fighting global warming was too much for the people.

The fuel tax increase did not happen in a vacuum. Macron's government reduced taxes on the wealthy. The contrast between reduced taxes for the wealthy and increased taxes for ordinary people added to the motivation for the yellow jackets.

Re: Only One Thing Needed

[DogDude]

The price for the gasoline at the pump is largely subsidized by the government, and doesn't account for any of the pollution. You're not paying for much of the true cost of the pollution you're generating with that gasoline at the pump.

Re:Troll

[HornWumpus]

They're generally called 'watermelons'. Green on the outside, red to the core.

Same old same old, but they've changed their public reasons for 'smashing capitalism'. Just boring and lame, but they don't have much left to base their arguments on.