The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement

Finally, 195 countries around the world came to an agreement on how to address climate change through such measures as curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and financial aid from rich to poor countries as they follow their individual paths to economic development.

Only time will tell whether the ambitious agreement will take hold once countries are able to begin signing, and then ratifying the measures from April 2016. Moreover, the agreement will only come into effect if 55 countries, representing 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions ratify the agreement by 2020. Even then, the text only contains "aims" and "promises" from countries rather than more specific targets attached to negative consequences for not adopting them within a set time range. (For the full text of the agreement, click on the hyperlink: 2015 Paris Agreement.)

Following suit, the first video below offers a brief summary of the agreement itself, while the second explains some common misconceptions about climate change.

What you need to know about the Paris climate agreement (video: USA Today, 12/12/2015)

What people get wrong about climate change (video: VOX, 12/12/2015)

Off to Paris the World's Leaders Go

This year's climate conference in Paris may be the most significant such meeting since 1998's conference in Kyoto. Despite the number of international signatories gathered in Japan, including US President Bill Clinton, the agreed greenhouse gas emission cuts failed to be adopted into law by many of the countries after that conference's close. The primary reason was that five of the worlds largest polluters, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (also known as the BRICS) were exempt from the emissions cuts to 1990 levels due to their "developing" economies that all other countries still had to adopt.

This year's Conference of Parties (or COP21) aims to expand the dialogue on climate change. Recent agreements between the world's two largest polluter's, China and the United States, may give the needed push to set the wheels of sustainable development, clean energy and environmental resilience in motion.

The video below summarizes COP21 as it takes place from Monday, yesterday through next Friday, December 11 in Paris. Compliments for the video would be in order to the production team at GreenTV.

Thanks for reading. See you with a summary report on the conference on December 15.