Emissions still rising does not mean climate action has failed

The Paris pact catalysed clean-tech advances that are paying off

- LARA WILLIAMS is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.

When 196 nations adopted the 2015 Paris climate accord, the UK prime minister at the time, David Cameron, wrote on Twitter: “Our grandchildren will see we did our duty.”

Ten years on, what would those grandkids think? The pact has started to look like a failure. But that only holds true if you're fixated on the end goal rather than the journey. The legally binding treaty aims to limit climate change to “well below 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts to keep the increase close to 1.5° Celsius. It specifies that countries should reach a “global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions” as soon as possible. But carbon emissions and anti-climate sentiments are both on the rise.

In 2025, the US, responsible for about 24% of all emissions ever pumped into the atmosphere, withdrew from the treaty for the second time under President Donald Trump. The EU has weakened key regulations as well, including its 2035 combustion engine ban and pollution reporting requirements. Elsewhere, greenhushing, which plays down environmental efforts to avoid political scrutiny, is on the rise among companies. Many experts seem almost certain that the 1.5° target is toast. Copernicus, the EU's Earth observation service, said the last three years are set to be the first period when average temperature rise would exceed that goal. And we're nowhere near net-zero emissions.