In December 2015, the then US President Barack Obama gave his reaction to the climate change deal brokered in Paris. Among the headline-making initiatives was the promise to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, yet for some green activists that deal was hardly a resounding success. Countries were legally bound to have their emission reduction levels checked but there was flexibility on how they went about hitting their targets - and they haven't. In this episode recorded in February 2016, Juliette Foster is joined by the author Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation and by Share Radio's then regular economics commentator, Professor John Weeks. They also discussed the 2016 perspective on the economics of climate change, and ask whether Paris made the link between excess human consumption and the impact on economies dependent on fossil fuels.
As the Glasgow COP 26 conference gets underway, it's helpful to re-visit these plans made 5 years ago, and consider how far we still have to travel.
