Not just population growth in under developed countries.
ALL countries.
Seeing as it appeared that population control was never mentioned at this "conference" it was a complete waste of time.
KRudd would have been proud of it.

This is an extremely long article but to answer one of its questions the Paris deal basically means very little, but then, for those who want emissions reduced, it is better than nothing. The nations involved are legally required to nominate target cuts. They are not required to meet them, and there is nothing that can be done if they don't, apart from naming and shaming.

I'm not clear about external, independent monitoring of any progress that may be made in meeting those cuts, but this will be very difficult for some countries. A lot will depend on the individual country producing correct figures, and I doubt that's going to happen with China, or many of the other developing countries.

As has been said all along, even totalitarian regimes will be unwilling to inflict economic pain in their citizens simply over climate theory - over what may happen decades hence. They will be worried about their jobs right now.

That said, Paris was about the best that could be hoped for.

I predict a longed for international ETS, which after simply churning mucho plenty money, make a few carbon brokers filthy rich trading what could become the most traded and therefore the most valuable commodity in the world?

And given the absolute intangibility of atmospheric carbon, who can double check, who is reducing or offsetting anything real?

Yes technology if ever actually deployed, can solve this crisis. And that has to include large scale solar thermal. Cheaper than coal thorium. Biogas production and use on city wide scales and even larger broad scale oil rich algae farming/non food non arable land, ethanol production.

Broad scale algae farming/alternative oil production/self sufficiency, holding the most promise for a number of extremely viable reasons?

The first of which is the fact algae absorb 2.5 time their bodyweight in Co2 emission and therefore routinely ignored by politicians one and all!?

Another is, some types of algae are up to 60% oil, which is child's play to extract as ready to use diesel or jet fuel, with the ex- crush material, more than suitable for broad scale ethanol production! And under optimised conditions algae quite literally able to double that bodyweight/absorption capacity/oil content every 24 hours!

Let me predict the following outcomes.

Not much of any real behavior modification save an international ETS?

I mean there's as much as 140 billions per in the offing for savy operators who call themselves brokers, and tailor made for some big law firms, choosi, John bumpkin and a host of political retirees?

Real action would hurt a few, but contained within the fossil fuel industry, the very industry creating nearly all the problems, particularly coal?

We are far too reliant on coal, along with the ubiquitous wealthy(mostly foreign) operators who currently have us by the economic short and curlies?

Why attack the fossil fuel industry, or decarb the economy all while massively improving it and future economic outcomes; when we have so many untouched pensioners, the working poor, single mums, the Gay community to attack and have I missed anybody?
Rhrosty.

Paris was theatre of the absurd. We had people burning a litre of jet fuel every 25 km or so to get there under facilities 75% powered by nuclear. Then they vilified those same energy sources. Here in Australia we have power sector emissions increasing 1-2% a year yet the minister tells us Australia is a world leader in reducing emissions. It's demented.

I think the correct approach is tough emissions targets not quotas for favoured technologies like wind and solar. If per capita emissions stay around the 20 tonne mark then for every new Aussie native born or immigrant we'll know we're making it harder to achieve the target. I don't favour enforced energy frugality so long as the source is benign. Every adult should own a vehicle if they want and be able to use air conditioning in 45C weather.

In short start with tough emissions policies then technology and population choices should fall into line.

This could have been one of the most important and perceptive articles yet written on the whole climate change debate. The critique of the Paris climate talks is excellent and shows that Saral has a a clear and accurate understanding of the human realities abounding on this issue.

But then he leaves planet Earth and heads off into outer space when, two thirds of the way through his article, he discusses the political-economic system and advises of his support for his version (vision?) of eco-socialism. The reason why the Paris agreement is so weak and ineffective is because, as Saral describes, the leaders of the 190 countries who signed the agreement understand that their citizens demand access to clean water, good education and health systems, and above all jobs that will pay them an income with which they can rise up above poverty and enjoy a life closer to that enjoyed by developed nations. Yet the eco-socialist system that Saral espouses in the final third of his article dismisses these aspirations as being unimportant and implies they can be ignored in exchange for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption within developing countries

If Saral is accurate in the first part of this article (and I believe he is), then he has allowed himself to be blinkered by his own rhetoric and hopes in describing a new world political system which has absolutely no chance of being adopted except maybe in small unimportant countries similar to Cuba or Venezuela. Large countries with high and growing fossil fuel consumption levels such as India, China, USA, Indonesia and Nigeria will not implement eco-socialist economics until the economic well being of their populations reaches a sufficiently high level to satisfy their (the people's) reasonable expectations; and only when a high standard of living has been reached will populations stabilise and, as shown in Japan, Russia and Italy, begin to decline.

The most important thing to come out of the Paris climate talks is the US$20 billion R&D fund to be used to discover and commercialise new technologies needed to allow fossil-fuel consumption to reduce. For better or for worse, technology is our ONLY hope and this fund may find us the new ways of producing and storing renewable energy that the world needs to allow developing countries to achieve high standards of living without burning the same volumes of fossil fuels as developed countries have burnt over the last 200 years.