COP21: good news!

Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, has been an excellent chair of the Paris Climate Change Conference. Tonight´s global agreement on an action plan is in many ways due to his wise leadership of the COP21 meeting. As we celebrate the agreement that has been reached we should also recognise the work the minister has done during the last two weeks.

And this is good news for the world, for the future and also good news for the French government. François Hollande´s government has been a weak player on the European front. Today´s success brings a little bit of lustre to Hollande and his team. That´s important as the prestige of France is one of the key elements that contributes to a more balanced Europe. 

There is some hope in Paris

There is a fresh breeze of optimism at the beginning of climate change conference. The world leaders’ meeting of today heard quite a number of nice words about the possibility of an agreement by the end of COP 21.

Let´s hope that will be the case. And that some kind of an accepted monitoring mechanism is put in place to keep track of the commitments made by more than 180 States, those that have already prepared a national plan on renewable energy.

The final document might not be a binding agreement. It might be just a shared pledge. But the monitoring system will help a lot in terms of naming and shaming those countries that might get off-track.

It is also important that the major world corporations be invited to commit themselves to the goals of carbon reduction and to invest on cleaner production and commercial processes. They can play a major role. Moreover, by going green they might be able to make some additional bucks. There is indeed a lot of money to be made during the next few years of new technologies, on research and development, and on marketing blue and green products and services.