The goal of COP-21 – the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 21st Conference of the Parties – in Paris at the end of November is to produce an international agreement to ensure greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by an amount necessary to prevent a 2 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature this century. With that as a goal, the conference is doomed to failure. Three reasons why:

The Forests of Oregon, viewed from Bend. Credit: Rod Parmenter

Efforts to foster forests and slow deforestation, which is one of the leading causes of global warming, are largely being glossed over by most nations as they prepare for a historic round of climate negotiations.

US secretary of state, John Kerry, has said that any climate deal in Paris is ‘definitively not going to be a treaty’. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

US warned that any agreement in Paris will be enshrined in law after secretary of state said it would ‘definitively’ not be a treaty

An island in the Maldives, which is vulnerable to rising seas.
Credit: Alessandro Caproni/Flickr

If rich countries don’t agree to help poorer ones recover after storms amplified by global warming tear villages apart, or help communities prosper even as their homes sink into rising seas, climate negotiations in Paris risk being scuttled...

Nnimmo Bassey

“…it boils down to the fact that the world is in a state of potential destruction. There’s no use worrying about anything else.”

—Ansel Adam’s final interview, Summer of 1984.

1000 MILLENNIALS TOOK THE STREETS FOR JUSTICE ON RACE, CLIMATE, IMMIGRATION

On November 9th, a wave of people power swept over Washington, DC. In an epic demonstration of unity, 1,000 millennials took the streets for justice on race, climate, and immigration.

Haze shrouds the Musi River as vehicles drive across the Ampera Bridge in Indonesia. (Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg)

President Barack Obama looks at Bear Glacier during a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park Seward, Alaska last September. | Getty

It's no accident the president rejected the Keystone pipeline before he seals a global deal to combat climate change.

21st Conference of the Parties on Climate

UNFCCC COP 21/ CMP 11.  30 Nov – 11 Dec, 2015