Government Stalemates

I'll never forget watching the former Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe bring a snowball onto the Senate floor to dismiss climate change as nonsensical. "Do you know what this is? It's a snowball," Inhofe said, holding the snowball aloft. "It's just from outside here, so it's very, very cold out ... very unseasonable." He continued. "We hear the perpetual headline that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, but now the script has flipped," Inhofe said.

There were two times I felt encouraged that governments across the globe would partner together to avert the worst impacts of environmental degradation. The first was in 2013, when China and the United States established the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) to enhance cooperation on climate change and clean energy. The second was when the Paris Climate account was signed. The Paris Agreement, also known as the Paris Climate Accord, was signed on December 12, 2015. This international treaty was adopted by 196 parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21).