For years, climate change was an issue that the majority of politicians around the world did not even acknowledge. It was put on the back burner because of other issues and crises that needed immediate attention. Now, it is a headlining article around the globe as world leaders now scramble to come up with successful and achievable plans to undo previous ignorance, reduce their carbon foot point and stop the earth from heating up at a much faster rate than is scientifically safe. But are these recent pledges really going to be enough to stop the consequences of climate change?

I am not a scientist; in fact, I am a finance and accountancy major. But it does not take much to acknowledge evidence found by highly credible scientists in their field. From the other climate change articles from the Organization for World Peace, we can take away one very important piece of overarching information: the environment is changing in ways nobody predicted and is affecting the lives of everyone. This is increasingly true for the most vulnerable among us; the children as they have to live in a world of other generations’ ignorance, the civilizations near bodies of water and any place that the world heating up, even by a few degrees, will see its way of life drastically chnaged.

Let us take a closer look at specific countries in the Paris Agreement. This agreement was first signed in 2016 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in which aims to reduce the greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming. The recent 2019 UN Summit gave world leaders more pressure to step up their previous pledges in the Paris Agreement. Of the 197 signatories to the agreement, 185 of these have ratified it, accounting for 87% of the world’s emissions according to the UN.

But are many of these countries on track to fulfil the pledges made? China, the world’s biggest polluter at 30%, is in the agreement and their recent efforts to reduce their carbon footprint should not go unnoticed. According to Forbes, China is legitimately interested in leading the development of mass renewable energy – they are currently the world’s largest developers in renewable and solar energy and have to greatest number of investments in green energy projects to date. When President Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, he made remarks about pulling out of the agreement, and as of November 2019 formally withdrew the United States from the agreement. The U.S is the 2nd largest world polluter according to acciona, contributing 15% of the world’s pollution. Pulling out of the agreement will have unimaginable dire consequences for the progress of reducing climate change.

Universal Ecological Fund recently published that out of the 184 pledges made, 136 are completely insufficient. Russia has ratified the agreement, yet has not made any pledges to decrease carbon emissions. Even countries like Australia and Brazil in the agreement are not on track to fulfill their pledges made, according to The Guardian. Under the 2015 deal, countries agreed to limit the global heating to 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius, yet the pledges put most countries nowhere near on track to meet this goal. This leads us as citizens to ponder the questions: are world leaders really doing all the they can to minimize the drastically negative effects of climate change and why is it acceptable for countries to make pledges and promises that will affect everyone, yet not follow through with them?

It is important to look back 10 years ago and see how much this crisis has improved and come to the attention of those who are in a position to make a large change. However, we as a globe still have a very long way to go, and not a lot of time left on our hands to do it. Leaders have the ability to create improvements on a very large scale. Whilst we as consumers we may feel that our keep cups, meat free Mondays and limitations on plastic use do not do much, it is a matter of supply and demand; if we all pitch in even just a little bit, we can help make a change.