In 2019 millions of climate-change activists took to the streets
Their figurehead, Greta Thunberg, addressed the US Congress
I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists
Here’s the thing
American politicians have been hearing from scientists...
...about the threat of climate change since the 1980s
This evidence represents a very strong case, in my opinion...
...that the greenhouse effect has been detected...
...and it is changing our climate now
Three decades on from James Hansen’s testimony...
...climate change is now recognised as the defining threat facing the planet
So, why has so little been done to stop it? 
50 years ago environmentalism was a fringe topic
But within a few years in the late 1980s...
...climate change quickly rose up the political agenda
We have begun to fight an important battle
We must also expect environmental responsibility
140 species are becoming extinct every day
At Rio we have made a start
This is an incredibly fast bit of worldwide discussion and diplomacy
It’s hard to think of something else, other than a war, that went that quickly
But turning this gathering interest into decisive action was another matter
In 1997 UN members met in Kyoto to agree, for the first time...
...on specific cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions
I am instructing increased negotiating flexibility
But there was a catch
The Kyoto protocol put various constraints on industrialised economies...
...to cut their emissions
It put no contraints on developing countries...
...on the basis that, at that point...
...the vast majority of emissions had come from industrialised countries
Its origin in the UN gave the Kyoto protocol universal legitimacy
But designing a treaty that all countries could accept...
...meant producing one with very little practical power
The UN has this fundamental issue that it’s a creature of its members
UN organisations lack clout
They can’t just tell their member countries what to do
This wouldn’t have mattered if every country shared...
...the same urgent need for action
But they didn’t
A sound environmental policy is likely to benefit everyone
But the costs fall on particular groups...
...typically those that do most of the polluting
And it’s these groups that have a strong interest in avoiding these costs
Most of the beneficiaries of climate action...
...are people who don’t yet exist or certainly can’t yet vote
And so, aligning the general interests of that mass of humanity...
...with the specific interests who are genuinely harmed...
...by reducing fossil-fuel emissions
That’s a hard thing to do. It would be a hard thing to do...
...within one political body
But if you had to do it between lots of nations, that’s even harder
America, a country which relies heavily on fossil fuels...
...like petrol, coal and natural gas, refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol
The use of fossil fuels has completely exploded...
...and it’s impossible to disentangle that explosion...
...from the huge growth in human population and in human wealth...
...that took place at the same time
So, still about 80% of the energy used on the planet...
...is dug up from the ground
Fossil fuels were formed from the remains of organisms...
...that lived and died millions of years ago
They hold a lot of carbon within them...
...making them a very concentrated store of energy...
...which helps to explain the political power...
...of the companies that extract and distribute them
There was a concerted campaign funded by various fossil-fuel interests
And to some extent, it carried on some of the tactics that have been used...
...by the tobacco companies to try and avoid restrictions on tobacco
And the result was to undermine the science of climate change
Beyond this, it played into a growing polarisation in politics
The right tends to think that governments should regulate less...
...sometimes much less
And there’s no real way through the climate crisis...
...without governments taking a very active role in the economy
So, if your starting-point is not just I want to keep my oil profits...
...but I want to keep the government out of the economy...
...then wanting there to be less action on climate change kind of fits into that
And then there’s China
In 1997 China was considered a developing country...
...and so, was exempt from the Kyoto commitment to cut emissions
In the years that followed, it took full advantage of this exemption
In the decade after Kyoto, China’s GDP almost tripled...
...and its carbon-dioxide emissions doubled...
...making it the largest greenhouse-gas emitter on the planet
The Chinese attitude to climate action was...
...basically that it was for someone else to do
It was not going to get in the way of...
...China’s extraordinary dash to industrialisation
Developed countries should not impose all kinds of unreasonable requirements...
...on developing countries that go beyond the stipulations of the convention
For almost two decades China refused to act
But in the 2010s all that changed
Let us join hands to contribute to the establishment...
...of an equitable and effective global mechanism on climate change
So, why the change of heart?
One reason may be that China genuinely does have...
...quite a lot to lose from climate change
Another thing is that in that period...
...renewable energy really starts to become a factor
And they’re really going to be able to produce some power...
...and China is quite keen on making it
And so, leading a renewables revolution...
...is the sort of thing that the Chinese Communist Party can get behind
The Paris agreement required all countries...
...both developed and developing, to commit to tackling global warming
It set a specific target...
...the increase in average global temperature...
...should be kept well below 2 degrees...
...with strenuous efforts made to keep it down to 1.5 degrees
But as with every previous breakthrough agreement...
...it involved compromise
The problem with this is that that was achieved by saying to all the countries...
...you tell us what you can do, and that’s great
They’d basically given up on the idea that countries would...
...commit in some slightly legally binding way to specific reduction
The emissions cuts that nations actually promised...
...were far too small to meet the 2-degree target
There is the problem—setting goals for 50-years’ time...
...when your actions that you’ve announced...
...to do in the next ten years are insufficient
Within the climate diplomatic community, there is now talk of ratcheting up
As things go on, countries will get more developed...
...more ambitious in what they promise
If countries really do ratchet up their action against climate change...
...it would break the 50-year cycle in which political compromises...
...have repeatedly enabled governments to avoid taking effective action
In that time CO2 emissions have more than doubled
And every decade since then has been warmer than the one before
50 years on from the first Earth day...
...a new generation of environmental activists are taking to the streets
They are determined to ensure that politics finally delivers...
...the drastic action needed to protect the planet
I’m Oliver Morton. I’m the briefings editor at The Economist
We’ve written a series of climate briefs to cover the basics...
...and a bit more than the basics on all sorts of aspects...
...of the climate crisis that’s facing the Earth
You can read them all at the link opposite
Thank you for watching
