To save growth, we must leave fossil fuels in the ground

The climate summit in Paris will enter the history books one way or the other. Given a choice, attending world leaders would like it to be remembered for the long-awaited successor to the Kyoto Protocol, capable of mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. Of course failure to broker such a deal risks closing the door on a global agreement altogether. Such an outcome will surely see the climate summits of Copenhagen and Paris cast as the twin peaks of lost opportunity and botched multilateralism. Gazing into my crystal ball, I’d say the political will to strike agreement this time around should ultimately win out. And while sleep-deprived world leaders will emerge from the summit and hail agreement as epoch making, anyone with a working knowledge of population growth, energy demand and emission pathways, will already be thinking implementation. And that’s if such a deal is even commensurate to the various risks posed by the increments in global average temperature.