Under a huge UN logo at the front of the hall, the COP21 chairpersons are sitting at a long conference table. The atmosphere is tense. Slowly the votes appear, and finally it is clear. The most ambitious global climate agreement so far has been adopted.
The politicians at the long table stand up, take each other’s hands, and raise them in a gesture of celebration.
The scene was captured by the many photographers present in the hall, and it has become iconic of the climate summit that adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015, by which world leaders committed “to hold global temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
That was right at the end of 2015, just over
