There is plenty of media coverage on the Paris agreement by people more knowledgeable than me. Even though I’m not an expert, I like to skim the actual document and try to pull out a few key points myself, just like I do with the IPCC reports. I had to get all the way to page 21 to find what looks to me like the two most important provisions:

• Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change

• In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal set out in Article 2, Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.

The first paragraph (sentence? nobody does a run-on sentence like the United Nations) is notable because it appears to be a commitment among most of the nations of the world to a more aggressive target than the 2 degrees C that seemed all but abandoned just recently. The second paragraph is nice because it conveys clearly that the goal is not just for emissions to stop growing. They have to be rolled back to a level where they are not actually adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It seems like that would almost certainly have to mean an end to fossil fuel burning, unless carbon is being captured on a large scale.

A more pessimistic way of looking at it though is that the “second half of this century” ends in 2099, and this wording seems like it would let things keep getting worse until then, and then let them stay at whatever bad level they are at.

I suspect that technology is likely to make fossil fuels obsolete well before 2099, and if so these targets will require no action to achieve. If we are still around in 2099, we will probably have new opportunities and problems that are well beyond our wildest imaginations now.