There is no way to meet the targets laid out in The Paris Agreement without keeping 90 percent or more of remaining coal, oil and gas in the ground. The adoption of this accord by more than 190 countries on December 12, 2015 marks the end of the era of fossil fuels. The final text still has some serious gaps, and the timetable will have to speed up, but the treaty places a red line on carbon emissions that all nations have agreed we cannot cross. With science, economics and law coming into historic alignment, a solar-powered economy is now unstoppable, and it will change everything. Will it come soon enough to matter? Will it be enough? How difficult will the transition be? There is a still a very large gap between climate science and this new prescription. There is a gap in political will, economic planning and general public awareness that must be bridged, and quickly. Our new way of operating will be crafted in the coming decade. This book looks at the pieces we have and the pieces that are still missing. The Paris Agreement follows the author's personal journey from COP-15 in Copenhagen to Le Bourget's Blue Zone, stopping along the way at endangered tropical rainforests, melting glaciers and sinking islands. It takes you through the exciting weeks in Paris, with the outcome uncertain, and how the text made its way through each day. We hang out in Belushi's Bar, attend the nightly Place to Brief, and travel along the Seine with the First Nations. At no time have the historic stakes been higher. In Paris there was rare drama, being played out among people from every corner of the planet, through the long hours of each night. Albert Bates takes us there, watches it all as it happened, and then looks at the final document, reproduced in entirety, and what it does and does not say.
About the Author: Albert K. Bates is a retired public interest attorney and author of several books on energy, environment, and history. He is a co-founder of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and the Global Ecovillage Network. During his 26-year career as an attorney, he argued environmental and civil rights cases before the US Supreme Court and drafted a number of legislative acts while publishing Natural Rights, a quarterly newsletter on deep ecology. His books Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial (1979) and Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What You Can Do (1990, with foreword by Al Gore) provided early insight into two of the greatest dangers now confronting the world. In 1980 he shared the first Right Livelihood Award for his work with Plenty International in preserving indigenous cultures. An inveterate inventor, he holds a number of design patents and was designer of concentrating photovoltaic arrays and solar-hybrid automobiles displayed at the 1982 World's Fair. He has been director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee, since 1994, where he has taught natural building, sustainable agriculture, permaculture and appropriate technology to students from more than 50 nations. His books, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (with foreword by Richard Heinberg) and The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change (with foreword by Vandana Shiva) are available in print and all e-book formats from New Society Publishers. A series of books, the ecovillage imprint, collecting his investigatory research and reporting over 30 years is available on Amazon for Kindle. Most recent additions are Pour Evian on Your Radishes and The Paris Agreement. He blogs at The Great Change and tweets @peaksurfer. A YouTube channel is available at the Collapse Café.