For ten years, the Paris Agreement has been sold as the plan to “keep 1.5°C alive.”

Every climate speech, every funding pitch, every glossy government slide seemed to end on the same line:

“We’re committed to 1.5 degrees.”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

We’re not.

The UN’s own numbers now say that under current policies, we’re headed for roughly 2.5–2.9°C of warming this century.¹ Under full delivery of all current Paris pledges, new analyses put us around 2.3–2.5°C by 2100.² ³

To keep warming to 1.5°C, global emissions would have needed to peak before 2025 and fall by roughly 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.⁴ The latest estimates say we would now need around a 55% cut by 2035 to stay under 1.5°C—a target UNEP itself calls “unachievable” under current efforts.³

The target has slipped.

The treaty hasn’t.

So what, exactly, is Paris doing now?

This piece is my attempt to answer that—and to show how, in places like Newfoundland, an off-target treaty still quietly runs the show.

The target that won’t die (on paper)

If you read the recent Emissions Gap Reports, they don’t sound like the protest signs. They sound like this, in plain language:

• Under current laws and policies, we’re on a path to around 2.5–2.9°C of warming by 2100.¹
• If every country fully delivers its latest Paris pledges (NDCs), that might drop to roughly 2.3–2.5°C.² ³
• Even in the most generous scenario, 1.5°C is no longer what the math shows, unless you assume huge amounts of future carbon removal that don’t exist yet.⁴ ⁵

There’s a lot of careful wording around this—“off track,” “insufficient ambition,” “implementation gap.” International bodies are not allowed to write:

“The thing we told you was non-negotiable?

We missed it, and we’re still missing it.”

So instead, the goal stays on the posters while the assumptions in the models quietly change.

• Temporary overshoots of 1.5°C are treated as acceptable.¹⁰
• Long-term scenarios build in more and more negative emissions later in the century.⁵
• “Nature-based solutions” and land-use changes pick up more of the load on paper.⁸ ¹¹

1.5°C survives as a moral slogan long after it has failed as a realistic pathway.

Paris, however, does not get retired.

Paris gets repurposed.

What Paris actually is: a global management system

On paper, the Paris Agreement sounds straightforward:

• Each country writes its own climate plan—its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
• Every five years, countries are supposed to “ratchet up” their ambition.
• Every so often, there’s a global stocktake where everyone compares notes.⁵

That’s the polite version.

Here’s the version that matches how it feels living under it:

• Paris is a global accounting system.
• It decides what counts as “doing your part.”
• It tells governments what they must promise if they want access to certain funds and legitimacy.
• It signals to banks, investors, and ratings agencies which projects are “Paris-aligned,” and which ones are risks.⁶ ⁷ ²¹

The heart of Paris is in Article 2. It doesn’t just talk about temperatures. It also says the agreement aims at:

**“Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”**⁶

That line is Article 2.1(c). It’s short, and it changed everything.

Think of it this way:

Article 2.1(a) is about the temperature.

Article 2.1(b) is about resilience.

Article 2.1(c) is about the money.⁶ ⁷

Legal analysts call 2.1(c) one of the biggest innovations in Paris, because it doesn’t just ask for climate policies—it asks that all financial flows be brought into line with those pathways.¹² Central banks, regulators, and investors are now told that climate alignment isn’t just a nice to-have; it’s part of the treaty’s core goal.²¹

Once you treat Paris as a finance-alignment project instead of only a temperature target, the question stops being:

“Is this what people want?”

and becomes:

“Is this what the models and the money need?”

When the world is off target, that difference matters a lot.

When you miss the target, you move the pieces

If the world is drifting toward 2–3°C in reality, but Paris is still built around “well below 2°C” and 1.5°C language, something has to give.¹ ² ³ ¹⁵

You cannot keep the same numbers without changing the inputs.

Those inputs live in a few places:

• Energy systems: how fast coal, oil, and gas are phased down;
• Industry and infrastructure: which projects are allowed, which get labeled “stranded”;
• Land and forests: how much carbon is “stored,” “avoided,” or “offset” on paper;
• Oceans and coasts: what gets zoned for shipping, fishing, conservation, or “blue carbon”;
• People’s expectations: what they are told is inevitable, what they are told is noble, and what they are not told at all.

If you can’t hit the target by cutting emissions fast enough, you have to:

• claim more land and ocean as carbon sinks,
• stretch timelines and rely more on overshoot and removals,⁴ ⁵
• and relabel existing development as “climate adaptation” or “resilience,” so it can still fit inside the Paris story.⁵ ²²

The physical planet becomes the adjustment variable.

So do the people standing on it.

Land, oceans, and “nature-based solutions”

One of the quiet ways Paris copes with failure is by leaning harder on “nature-based solutions.”

That phrase sounds harmless. Who could be against nature?

But in practice, it often means:

• Forest projects that are counted as carbon sinks or planted as offset schemes;
• Peatlands and wetlands suddenly worth more on paper “left alone” than in local use;
• Protected areas under the “30x30” banner—30% of land and sea conserved by 2030—where new legal designations shift who decides what happens there;⁹ ¹⁴ ¹⁸
• Marine protected areas and blue carbon zones where fishing and small-boat livelihoods become secondary to climate or biodiversity targets.⁹ ¹⁸

Nature-based solutions are defined as actions that protect, manage, or restore ecosystems in ways that address societal challenges while providing environmental and climate benefits.⁸ ¹¹ In theory, they can be a win–win. In practice, they can also become bookkeeping tools—a way to increase the “nature” column in a model while the fossil fuel column moves too slowly.

The land and sea involved are never abstract.

They already belong to someone, or are used by many someones.

Under the Paris logic, mapped land and mapped ocean can start to look like collateral:

• A protected area here “balances” an industrial zone there.
• A new conservation designation here helps a government claim extra climate ambition in its NDC.⁹ ¹⁴
• A coastal buffer here helps a country argue it is building “resilience” even if local people were barely part of the decision.¹¹ ²²

If you live in a place that outside planners see as “underused” or “sparsely populated,” you are more likely to find yourself on one of those maps—as a unit, not as a neighbor.

How this looks from Newfoundland

From here, Paris doesn’t arrive as a treaty.

It arrives as:

• new offshore zones and marine spatial planning exercises;
• wind-to-hydrogen and transmission projects sold as “helping Europe meet its climate targets”;
• endless consultations where the project is already described as a Paris-aligned solution, and your role is to select from a pre-approved list of concerns.

When the wind and hydrogen push hit the Port au Port Peninsula and other parts of western Newfoundland, the language was straight out of the Paris playbook:

• “green export opportunity,”
• “helping our allies reach their net-zero goals,”
• “positioning Newfoundland as a clean energy hub.”

At the same time, land and water were being quietly re-described:

• traditional use areas framed as “project sites,”
• communities downgraded to “stakeholders,”
• fishers and residents invited into processes where the existence of the project itself was never up for discussion.

All of this arrived before any serious talk about:

• grid reliability for locals,
• long-term impacts on land and water access,
• or the actual distribution of costs and benefits inside the province.

In that sense, Paris acts here as a permission structure:

“Because the world must decarbonize, you must accept this version of decarbonization.”

If you question the project, you’re told you’re “against climate action” or “against opportunity.” If you ask who wrote the contracts and who holds the leverage, you’re told that’s above your pay grade.

The treaty is global.

The pressure is very local.

The emotional upgrade: from sacrifice to “development”

This is where the follow-on from Bill Gates matters.

The old Paris story asked people, especially in richer countries, to accept sacrifice for 1.5°C:

• higher energy costs,
• bans and phase-outs,
• lifestyle changes,
• emergency language like “code red for humanity.”⁵

That story is wearing out. It also no longer matches the official trajectories.¹ ² ³ ¹⁵

The new story—the one Gates is now pushing—sounds gentler:

• we’re not going to hit 1.5°C anyway;
• people in poor countries need more energy, not less;
• “development is adaptation”;
• our main job is to reduce human suffering per dollar spent.

If you plug that narrative back into Paris, you get an upgraded script:

• Big energy and infrastructure projects that were already designed for export or profit are now framed as “development” and “resilience” for the vulnerable.¹²
• Carbon and nature projects that lock up land or sea are sold as protecting communities from climate impacts, even when those communities had little say in the design.⁹ ¹¹ ¹⁸ ²²
• Governments and investors can keep using Paris pathways as their reference point, while the emotional hook shifts from “sacrifice for the planet” to “compassion for the poor.”³ ¹²

The structure of Paris doesn’t change.

The story wrapped around it does.

That is what I mean when I say:

The climate story has been rewritten.

The decision-making structure has not.

Off target, still on script

If this were simply a matter of “we tried and failed,” the honest thing to do would be:

• admit that 1.5°C is no longer realistic under current trajectories,¹ ² ³ ¹⁵
• openly talk about 2–3°C futures and what they really mean,
• re-build climate policy around real risk, real limits, and real consent.

That is not what’s happening.

Instead, we have:

• an agreement that remains formally committed to a target it no longer expects to hit;¹ ² ³ ⁴
• a financial and legal architecture that keeps tightening around that agreement;⁶ ⁷ ¹²
• and a new emotion—compassion for the vulnerable—used to justify keeping everything running as-is.³ ¹²

It is absolutely true that many people are vulnerable.⁵ ⁹ It is absolutely true that energy, food, and health matter more than abstract numbers on a graph.

What I don’t accept is this:

• using those truths as a shield for unquestioned global planning;
• using those truths to mask land grabs and zoning decisions made in the name of “nature” or “resilience”;⁹ ¹¹ ¹⁸ ²²
• using those truths to tell local communities they must accept whatever arrives wrapped in a Paris ribbon.¹²

If you live in a place like Newfoundland, you don’t meet Paris in a negotiation room. You meet it in:

• the terms of your next megaproject,
• the line on the map that suddenly says “protected,” “project,” or “transfer,”
• the silence in public meetings when you try to talk about anything outside the script.

The world is off target.

Paris is still on script.

If you want to understand what that means in practice, look not at the speeches but at the maps, the contracts, and the consultations.

That’s where you see what this treaty has become—and who it’s really for.

See Also

GFANZ and the Paris Agreement: ESG Pressure, Financial Levers, and the Bypass of Sovereignty

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/paris-accord/post.php?id=170

Behind the Green Curtain: How Global Contracts and Climate Branding Drove the Wind and Hydrogen Push in Newfoundland

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/paris-accord/post.php?id=171

Silence by Design: How Geopolitics Got Censored in Newfoundland’s Wind Debate

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/paris-accord/post.php?id=172

When the Bank Calls the Shots: How Paris-Aligned Finance Exploits Newfoundland’s Governance Gap

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/local-paradox/post.php?id=140

Echoes from Elsewhere: The Manufactured Consent Machine Behind Port au Port’s Greenwashing

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/local-paradox/post.php?id=159

The Local Paradox in Grand Policy Schemes: Why Resets Fail in Newfoundland

https://baymansparadox.com/explore/local-paradox/post.php?id=139

References