Bold claim: the Paris Agreement did not just alter policy—it reshaped the trajectory of global climate action. This piece marks the ten-year milestone of that watershed moment, and it invites us to reflect on what changed, what didn’t, and what still lies ahead. I watched the negotiations from inside the room as a journalist, initially suspecting that 194 nations could never align on anything meaningful. Yet they did. There are countless ways to narrate the story, but any telling must honor the complexities and the many shades between triumph and setback.
I feared the anniversary would highlight how far we still have to go. Then, in July, a ruling from the International Court of Justice shifted the landscape, endowing the Paris framework with enforceable consequences it previously lacked. The court asserted that all nations bear a legal duty to address the climate crisis, and, as Greenpeace International explained, to regulate businesses for the harm their emissions cause, irrespective of where that harm occurs. The decision also affirmed that the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a fundamental human right, guiding how climate obligations should be interpreted and applied. Notably, the Paris treaty was repeatedly cited as foundational precedent for this ruling.
Vanuatu’s climate envoy Ralph Regenvanu captured the sentiment: this may be among the most consequential cases in human history. Costa Rica’s Christiana Figueres, who helped shepherd the Paris agreement, expressed tearful jubilation on her podcast, calling it the most far-reaching and consequential legal opinion we’ve ever seen. The case, which culminated at the world’s highest court, had its humble origins with 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in 2019. They wondered what they could do about climate change—despite feelings of being small players from small places. They recruited Blue Ocean Law and enlisted Vanuatu as the plaintiff, aligning with Pacific island nations, indigenous leadership, and the global south. The unanimous ruling matters most in how it is applied—through direct lawsuits or by encouraging other nations to curb climate devastation before courts are compelled to intervene.
What few people realized at the time is that many negotiators entered the conference aiming for a “reasonable” two-degree global limit. As climate organizer Renato Redentor Constantino has argued, the powerful resisted adopting 1.5 degrees, a threshold scientists say is the maximum compatible with a safe future. It was the Climate Vulnerable Forum, representing many southern nations, that pressed to tighten the target from 2 degrees to 1.5. Activists still recall chants of “1.5 to stay alive,” a haunting reminder that a two-degree rise would translate into catastrophe for numerous regions and communities. The shift from 2 to 1.5 degrees was a pivotal counterweight to the balance of power, and that number has since become a touchstone in climate discourse. Even though we have crossed the 1.5-degree line, it is arguably better to be at 1.5 than at 2, since the latter would likely have bred even greater complacency and harm.
Stories alone don’t move policy, but they can illuminate how we drive change. Climate policy scholar Leah Stokes of UC Santa Barbara explained that when small island nations demanded 1.5 degrees, they also secured a mandate for the IPCC to produce a dedicated scenario showing how to reach that target. The resulting report, published in October 2018, reframed the policy conversation around aggressive emissions cuts—shaping the Biden administration’s ambitions to pursue comprehensive climate legislation. In other words, advocacy from the frontlines of vulnerability can ripple outward, affecting national agendas and sparking broader reforms.
That ripple effect is visible in the United States: the Build Back Better Act, refined and expanded into the Inflation Reduction Act, embodied a bold attempt to meet the 1.5-degree goal. While debates raged, the core elements of that plan persisted, and the Act’s influence extended beyond U.S. borders, nudging other countries toward more ambitious climate policies. Meanwhile, subnational actions—state and local initiatives—kept momentum alive even as national administrations shifted. Globally, progress remains uneven: deforestation continues to threaten vast ecosystems, subsidies for fossil fuels persist, and the grand redesign of daily life, mobility, and consumption remains incomplete.
On the upside, the renewables surge deserves its due recognition. When the Paris Agreement was forged, clean energy costs were still higher than fossil fuels, and deployment was uneven. Yet solar and other renewables have dramatically outpaced earlier forecasts. The Ember energy group notes a year of record solar growth and stagnant fossil fuel use in 2025, signaling a shift where clean power becomes the main driver of the electricity sector. The IEA adds that the electricity sector has become the largest employer in energy, underscoring how electricity-driven progress is redefining jobs and markets.
Forecasting energy futures in 2015 would have seemed fantastical to many: by 2025, wind and solar would outpace coal as primary energy sources in many places. Battery tech advances and system design improvements have enabled broad adoption—from Denmark’s low-emission grid to Texas and even Pakistan, where affordable solar panels are driving energy independence. In places like Australia, solar affordability is so transformative that daytime power could be effectively free for several hours via advanced retail models. Concerns about intermittency have largely been addressed through storage solutions, enabling sunny California to meet, and exceed, its daytime electricity needs. The result is a marked reduction in natural gas use for power—California now relies far less on gas than two years ago.
China’s path toward lower emissions is accelerating as it shifts to renewables, and its recent UN commitment signals a new phase of accountability. While the world still faces enormous challenges, the trajectory is bending away from the worst-case scenarios: the pre-Paris forecast of roughly 4 degrees of warming has shifted toward an estimate around 2.5 degrees, a testament to the hard work of climate movements, thoughtful leadership, and strategic policy choices.
So, is this enough? Not by a long shot. Yet the progress—from landmark treaties to consequential court decisions, to energy and policy milestones—shows that meaningful change is possible when courage and collaboration collide. The Paris Agreement and the Vanuatu victory matter not just for what they achieved but for how they catalyze ongoing action. The road ahead remains long and demanding, but the momentum is undeniable: for decades, maybe centuries, it may be too late to salvage everything, yet it cannot be too late to salvage something.
Would you agree that today’s climate progress is real and tangible, or do you see deeper risks that could derail momentum? How would you balance the urgency of ambitious targets with the political and economic realities we face? Your thoughts on the parts that excite you and the points you disagree with can help illuminate the path forward.
