Paris: The home of climate action

I’m going to Paris! Paris, home of my son; Paris, home of the Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 countries at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop21) in 2015.

Legally-binding, the goal was to keep the increase in global average temperatures to below 2°C, and to try for a maximum of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

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But it’s snowing in Paris. Taking the wind chill factor into account, it’s -8°C outside during the day.

My son sends me pictures of the snowman they built outside work. It looks pretty, but bitter. That guy looks like he needs a warm coat, I say. So will you, he replies.

Tomorrow it’s due to snow again as I (try to) land there. The predicted high is 4°C. Then, not 48 hours later, there’s a forecast of 18°C, which amounts to a November heatwave.

Packing my suitcase is baffling: enormous ski coat, snow boots and… flip-flops? Meanwhile, here in Dublin I’ve just been on my last walk with the dogs before I travel.

Over my tracksuit I was wearing boots, bobble hat and winter coat. Alas, I forgot my gloves. I thought I’d lose a few fingers it was that biting, with a “real-feel” of -5°C.

Yet only a week ago the thermometer in Dublin was in the mid-teens, unseasonably warm, so much so that my 19-year-old nephew – newly arrived from South Africa – appeared at the breakfast table in shorts.

The temperature is due to soar back into those mild mid-teens in two days.

It’s all very irregular; it’s all very confusing.

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Still, I’m going to Paris, home of the climate action signed into law nine years ago.

Crossing the Paris-agreed designated threshold unleashes all manner of chaos, with ever more severe heatwaves, droughts, storms, floods, and wildfires.

We’re seeing it already every year, faster and faster, even at our current 1.3°C of global heating: recently scientists assessed 550 “unnatural” climate crisis disasters, and those were only the ones they were counting.

To stall at the hoped 1.5°C, in Paris they agreed emissions must peak by 2025 – next year – then drop by 43% by 2030.

It’s all hot air: we’re on course for a catastrophic rise of 3.1°C.

And now it’s COP29 and they’re eating beefburgers wrapped in plastic under the air-conditioning in Azerbaijan…

And I’m flying to Paris.

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