Climate change has dominated the news over the past 15 months. First, nearly 200 nations signed a historic accord in Paris during the COP21 climate talks in December 2015. The signatories to the accord, including the United States, the countries of the European Union, China and India, agreed to do their part to cut carbon emissions, and the Paris agreement entered into force months ahead of schedule.
With their commitments to the Paris agreement, participating nations seek to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. If temperatures rise over that limit, scientists say global warming will accelerate to catastrophic levels. Even worse, it will no longer be possible to reverse these temperature shifts.
But climate change has also become something of a political football, at least in the United States. For the new presidential administration, early moves seem to focus on easing fossil fuel extraction restrictions. And fossil fuels like oil and coal increase carbon emissions.
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Photo credit: Image by Arnold Paul (cropped by Gralo) via Wikimedia Commons
