A year of extreme climate events sets the agenda for COP27

Why read this story?

Editor's note: 1992 was a landmark year. The Cold War had just ended, India was on the road to recovery after opening up its economy the year before and China had set course to becoming an economic powerhouse. Nations across the world had also come together in an unprecedented (and eventually successful) effort to mend the ozone layer.  But an even bigger event took place that year. Countries decided to mount a global environmental effort that required them to make hard choices. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, signed in June 1992, pledged to cut the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. The atmospheric concentration of these gases—which increases owing to burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees—had crossed a tipping point; it threatened to trigger catastrophic weather changes. At the same time, cutting emissions posed a threat to the world economic order, built on cheap fossil fuels.  The convention was signed in the hope that it would all work out.  “It was an age of innocence,” recalls Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science …