The nations of the world, including the United States, have gathered in Katowice, Poland for the last two weeks to urge each other to do more than pretend to address climate change. There is now near-universal recognition (Donald Trump excepted) that their rhetorical commitments at Paris three years ago will, even if honored, be insufficient to slow climate change enough to keep average global temperatures below, or even at, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above average temperatures at the start of the industrial revolution in 1750.

And the shameful fact is that the Paris commitments are not being honored in practice, either in the United States under Trump or in major developing countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. While China and possibly even India may be able to meet their Paris commitments by reducing (China) or limiting (India) future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, those commitments are, according to Climate Action tracker, grossly insufficient to bring their emissions down to the levels required for the world to avoid an increase of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) or more over pre-industrial levels. If U.S. and E.U. GHG emission reductions do not meet their Paris commitments (and Poland, an E.U. member is currently racing to build more coal plants) and developing country emissions continue to increase sharply, average global temperature could even increase by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of our century, making large parts of the world uninhabitable and changing dramatically the natural environment in which human life has flourished over the past five thousand years.