The agreement reached at COP 21 in Paris will not be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. While countries agreed to reduce emissions, the voluntary targets set by nations will not keep global warming below 2°C or ideally 1.5°C. The agreement also failed to consider long-term decarbonization goals or provide a clear plan to meet temperature limits. For these reasons, the Paris Agreement amounts to merely a statement of intent rather than a solution, and catastrophic climate impacts may still occur as predicted by some scientists.

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AGREEMENT OF COP 21 IS NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE THE PLANET EARTH
OF CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE
Fernando Alcoforado *
After several years of negotiations, deadlocks, timid advances and failures, 195
countries and the European Union produced at COP 21 in Paris a global agreement
defining how humanity will fight against global warming in the coming decades. For
the first time, every country in the world is committed to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases, strengthen the resilience (ability to return to its natural state,
especially after a critical situation and unusual) and unite in a common cause to combat
climate change. The agreement has no legal character for all goals, as wanted most.
The agreement of the COP 21 consists of a 31-page document. It contains a 12-page
text, the Paris Agreement, and a decision detailing how the agreement will be executed.
Together, the two documents form a sort of reorientation manual of the world economy.
They signal, albeit in a very preliminary way, that greenhouse gas emissions must come
to an end sometime in the twenty-first century. For optimists, the agreement is the end
of the era of fossil fuels.
The stated aim of the Paris Agreement is to limit the increase in global average
temperature in much less than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and efforts to limit the
temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would
reduce significantly the risks and impacts of climate change. The reference to 1.5 °C
goal came thanks to the joint action of island countries to be doomed to extinction in the
long term by rising sea levels resulting from a warming of 2 °C.
As the reduction target of greenhouse gas emissions presented are unable to hold the
temperature at the required level, it was decided that it will be necessary to adjust them
every five years, starting from 2023. These adjustments would need a framework which
was not considered in the text of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement also
provides that the rich countries to commit to the disbursement of at least US$ 100
billion a year from 2020 for emissions reduction projects in developing countries and
confirms that developing countries can broaden the base of donors in the future, albeit
on a voluntary basis.
Two key aspects were not considered in the Paris Agreement: 1) the long-term goal of
decarbonising the economy in 2050 or to cut at least 70% of global emissions of
greenhouse gases by mid-twenty-first century; and, 2) the temperature target is not
accompanied by a roadmap telling how the world aims to reach less than 2 °C or 1.5 °C,
which weakens the pursuit of this target. In other words, the COP 21 produced an
agreement that is in practice a mere letter of intent.
It is clear, therefore, that the Paris Agreement does not address the fundamental issues,
as well as voluntary targets set by each of the combined nations are not sufficient to
ensure that global warming be below 2 degrees Celsius, heading 1,5 degree Celsius by
the year 2100. Moreover, the document is silent to not submit proposals that contribute
to the construction of a model of sustainable development on our planet to replace the
unsustainable existing capitalist development model and to build a world of peace that
opposes the wars that proliferate around the world. The capitalist development model in
force and wars are the most responsible for compromise the environment of the planet.

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140 years ago, Karl Marx had already warned in The Capital to the destructive
consequences for the environment of the then recent capitalist mode of production.
Marx said that "every progress in capitalist agriculture is not only a progress in the art
of despoil the worker, but also in the art of despoil the soil; every progress in increasing
their fertility within a specified time-limit is also progress in the ruin of the lasting
sources of that fertility. The more a country, for example, the United States, is based on
its development of large-scale industry, so the faster that process of destruction.
Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the combination of the
social process of production, undermining both the sources of all wealth: The earth and
the worker" [K. Marx. O Capital (The Capital), Vol I. São Paulo: Boi tempo Editora,
2013].
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of means of production.
To move resources, to produce and to earn more, accumulating more and more capital,
capitalist enterprises consume and deplete natural resources in pursuit of growth and
profit as a fundamental prerequisite for the capitalist system to continue expanding.
Capitalism destroys to re-boost. It is indisputable that there was a huge breakthrough in
the level of average welfare of the inhabitants of planet Earth from the Industrial
Revolution in England in 1760. However, much of this was achieved at the expense of
uncontrolled use of natural resources, especially to generate energy needed based on
fossil fuels that has sustained the capitalist economic growth. Today, Nature is already
charging your price, just observe the resulting impacts of climate change that are likely
to become catastrophic.
To change this situation and put an end to the constant climate changes that threaten to
destroy our planet and humanity, it is necessary to promote a profound transformation
of society today. The unsustainability of the capitalist development model in place is
evident considering that has been extremely destructive of the living conditions on the
planet. Given this fact, it is imperative to replace the current capitalist dominant mode
of production around the planet for another mode of production that takes into account
the man integrated with the environment, with nature, that is, the model of sustainable
development. This was not considered at COP 21.
Another question not addressed at COP 21 refers to wars also largely responsible for
compromise the environment of the planet, which are proliferating around the world and
serve to leverage the capitalist system. Among the many disastrous consequences of
war, are the devastating effects on the environment. The bombing of military targets and
civilians, the intense movement of military vehicles and troops, the large concentration
of flights of fighting, the thrown missiles on cities and the destruction of military and
industrial structures during all these conflicts also cause the emission of metals and
other heavy substances that contaminate soil, water and air. In addition to the
environmental contamination it is also necessary to consider the modification of natural
landscapes and biodiversity loss in the long run, due to the presence of landmines or
chemical agents dispersed in the environment. This was not considered also in the COP
21.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that the Paris Agreement is omitted, also, with
regard to the construction of a governance system on the planet that is able to ensure the
reordering of the world economy that is taking the world into depression, the planet's
environment threatened by catastrophic climate change and international relations
worsening every day feeding the proliferation of wars. Faced with these serious

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omissions of COP 21, it can be said that hardly we will be successful in trying to avoid
the catastrophic changes in Earth's climate in the twenty-first century. James Lovelock,
renowned scientist, says that global warming is irreversible and that it will be a dark
time in which more than 6 billion people will die in this century. In other words,
Lovelock says that the human race is doomed and must live with the four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse - war, famine, pestilence and death [See the article Aquecimento global
é inevitável e 6 bi morrerão, diz cientista (Global warming is inevitable and 6 billion
will die, scientist says) available on the website
<http://rollingstone.uol.com.br/edicao/14/aquecimento-global-e-inevitavel-e-6-bi-
morrerao-diz-cientista#imagem0>]. Unfortunately, the Paris Agreement does not allow
avoiding this scenario outlined by James Lovelock.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 76, Bahia Academy member for Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning energy systems, is the
author Globalization of books (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), From the Collor FHC- Brazil and Nova
(Des) World order (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), A Project for Brazil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
2000), The determinants of the development of the State of Bahia (PhD Thesis. University of Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalization and Development (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006 ), Bahia- Development of the sixteenth century to the twentieth century and Strategic
Objectives in the Era Contemporary (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Global Warming and Disaster Planetary (P
& A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Sustainable Amazon to Brazil's progress and combating global
warming (Vienna-Publishing and Printing, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), The Determinants
Factors of Economic and Social Development (Publisher CRV, Curitiba, 2012) and Energy in the World
and Brazil- Energy and Climate Change Catastrophic in the XXI Century (Editor CRV, Curitiba, 2015).