The Paris Agreement on Climate Change established the goals of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Since then, people around the world have increasingly mobilized the law before national and international courts to achieve this goal. And every year, climate negotiations at the Conferences of Parties (COPs) make front-page news, often accompanied by the latest, yet again alarming calculations from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Today, ten years after the conclusion of the Paris Climate Agreement, it is abundantly clear that many hopes have been dashed. The hottest year on record was 2024, with a recorded 1.6°C of warming. As emissions and temperatures continue to rise, the Paris Agreement’s goals risk becoming unachievable altogether. 

The role of law in addressing this crisis begs scrutiny. Over the past decade, the number of legal instruments to combat climate change has increased. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise simultaneously. More than half of all greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution were emitted after 1992—not only at a time when the causes and disastrous effects of climate change were sufficiently known, but also after states had agreed to the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth Summit. How should this parallel between more climate law and ever-increasing emissions be understood?  

The event marks a collaboration on this topic with the street journal “Arts of the Working Class”, and launches the journal’s current issue that will also be distributed during the COP30 in Belém, Brazil.