How The Islands That Will Be Destroyed By Climate Change Won A Victory In Paris

The 1.5 degree target was pushed for by the people who most desperately need it—because their homes are the most threatened. Dr. Hugh Sealy is sitting in his office in Grenada, looking out at a Caribbean bay and contemplating the work that lies ahead of him. Just about a week ago, at the climate treaty negotiations in Paris, he and dozens of other delegates representing small island nations like Grenada, the Maldives, and the Marshall Islands joined in singing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

The Paris Agreement was, in improbable ways, a victory for extremely climate-vulnerable nations like the Maldives, for which Sealy served as lead negotiator this year. The world had spent the previous decade trying and failing to come to an agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. If 2 degrees was a stretch, 1.5 degrees—which the scientific consensus now acknowledges is required to avert major climate change impacts, such as drowned islands—seemed near impossible. Click here for the full story (Source: Fast Company).