Cover Story By TIM McDONNELLHow Watershed Paris Summit Changes Climate Story
International press and delegation media staffs at the Climate Summit Media Centre show strain of chasing after 146 nations’ leaders and others during the first day of the meeting. More than 3000 journalists, including photographers and video crews, were registered for the summit. .
Photo: © Gary Braasch /
WorldViewofGlobalWarming.org
When they closed down the coffee shop, I was worried. But when they stopping selling wine, I was devastated. It was Saturday night, and the global climate change summit in Paris was on the cusp of a climactic photo finish. There were no more formal negotiations, no more press conferences. The cluster of airport hangars that had been converted into a conference center was beginning to shut down, including the café that had fed and watered the world’s climate journalists for the last two weeks. By the time I noticed, it was too late to stock up on cel- ebratory booze.
Seated at desks in the cavernous press room, a few hundred other journalists and I gazed up at televisions piping in a live feed from the grand hall next door. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was about to take the stage and announce the most ambitious diplomatic agreement on climate change in history. He was a few hours late — at the last minute, lawyers from the U.S. team spotted a typo in the final text, an apparently inad- vertent but potentially calamitous substitution of “shall” for “should” in a section describing developed countries’ obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [
j.mp/typoNearlyDerailedCli- mateDeal]. But after 20 puttering years of climate talks, what were a few more hours?
The mood was electric. Finally, Fabius appeared, and with little ado declared that the Paris Agreement was hereby adopted. The press room erupted in cheers — particularly the members of one TV crew nearby who launched a cavalcade of loud, drunken toasts in an unidentifiable language. Clearly some people were better pre- pared to party than I was. Amid the cacophony, someone reminded Fabius that protocol required he actually strike his green, leaf-shaped gavel.
“It is a very small hammer,” he said, giving it a nice whack. “But I think it will do great things.” [
bit.ly/GreenGavel]. For environmental journalists, the overarching task of the fore- seeable future is to track whether Fabius’ prediction pans out.
For journalists, agreement means reframing of climate story
Once their hangovers cleared, many activists, policy wonks, scientists and government officials quickly found things to dislike in the Paris Agreement. It remains to be seen whether the document will truly propel meaningful global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and the flow of funds to the most impacted communities for adapting to the changes that are already inevitable.
Still, it seems fair to say that Paris was a legitimate sea change
in humankind’s campaign against climate change. The agreement, and the moment in time that produced it, represent a new founda- tion on which all future climate-oriented lawmaking, science, in- vestment and activism will be built.
And for journalists, it represents a fundamental reframing of
the story. More so than ever, perhaps even for the first time, climate change can be a story about real, meaningful progress — not the lack thereof.
In other words, that drunk TV crew really did have something
to celebrate. I don’t mean to suggest that the problem is solved. Any resident of a low-lying island nation or anyone who has followed the Repub- lican presidential primary knows we ain’t out of the woods yet. But optimism has been sparse in the two and a half decades since the preeminent climatologist James Hansen first warned Con-
5 SEJournal Spring 2016
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