After Paris climate deal, now the hard part

Five months after 195 nations sealed the world's first global climate deal, diplomats gather again in the French capital tomorrow to start translating good intentions into reality.
The informal two-day meeting of negotiators from about 50 countries will kick off a flurry of diplomatic activity, including a formal signing of the Paris Agreement at the UN headquarters in New York next week.
"April 22 is a key moment in terms of continuing what we saw in Paris," said David Waskow, a senior climate expert at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.
The historic accord calls for global warming to be stopped in its tracks at "well under two degrees Celsius" (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial benchmark.

But national commitments to slash greenhouse gases far fall short of that hugely ambitious goal, and how to close the remaining emissions gap has yet to be worked out.
Pledges to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and yen to poor countries greening their economies and bracing for climate impacts are likewise short on specifics.

"Paris created momentum to start to grapple with some of these issues, but it doesn't mean that they are solved yet," said Alden Meyer, a veteran climate analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC.
Fears that efforts would flag after the champagne was drained in December have proven unfounded, said French Environment Minister Segolene Royal, the current president of the UN climate forum.

"One could have anticipated a slowdown in the pace, but in fact we've seen an intensification of commitments," she told AFP.
There are, indeed, encouraging signs.
The United States and China -- which together account for nearly 40 percent of global carbon pollution -- continued their "G2" climate leadership by promising to ratify the accord quickly after the signing ceremony.
The Paris Agreement will only enter into force thirty days after 55 countries, representing at least 55 percent of global emissions, take this step.