Paris Agreement On Climate Change Gaining Momentum – If It Gets Past The Hard Part

Just after India announced their ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement, the European Parliament followed suit in a move that made the international agreement a reality long before those who want to negotiate are expecting.

Miguel Arias Cañete, EU's climate and energy commissioner took the issue to Twitter, saying that "We made the deal in Europe, and we make it a reality in Europe."

The agreement, as noted by The Washington Post, is said to take into effect when at least 55 countries that represent 55 percent of global emissions have joined in. Thanks to India's ratification over the weekend, the numbers stood at 62 nations and just shy of 52 percent emissions. With the European Union collectively responsible for 12.1 percent of these said emissions, the climate deal now has more than enough to cross its 55 percent threshold.

While the EU is said to join as a whole, only seven member countries actually ratified the agreement so far, including big emitters such as Germany and France, which are responsible for 2.56 and 1.34 percent of the global emissions respectively. Still, the numbers are enough to bring the deal to a close.

After a 30-day period, the agreement will legally enter into force - a milestone that drew celebration from supporters. European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in a statement that the entry of the Paris agreement into full force in less than a year is a massive achievement, especially considering that it took eight years for the Kyoto protocol to mark into effect.

But now that the agreement has gone past its goal, the focus is going to shift into the actual issues, namely: how will the world actually get to a point where it's possible to limit the warming of the planet to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius as the agreement called for? This is especially concerning, considering that models that showed how we can keep the warming under 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius would mean that we have to include enormous negative CO2 emissions, including having to extract them from the air, if the world is ever going to achieve its goal.