Ten Years After the Paris Agreement: The Tragedy of the Overshoot Generation (artigo / 2025)

 

The Paris Agreement will be ten years old in 2025. It is a good opportunity, then, to reassess the feasibility of its long-term goals and understand what they mean for the current and for the next generations. 

In a very optimistic scenario, if the goals of the Paris Agreement are achieved, the climate crisis will have been solved by the end of the 21st century. In the meantime, though, the crisis will worsen, as temperature overshoot is very likely to occur by the middle of the century. During the overshoot period, our planet’s average temperature exceeds 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which is the threshold proposed by the Paris Agreement. At the end of the overshoot period, which could last from one to several decades, the temperature will begin to fall until it eventually stabilises at 1.5°C at the turn of the century. 

Conflicting interests of three different generations are at stake here, namely: (1) the interests of the current generation, (2) those of the overshoot generation, and (3) the interests of the post-overshoot generation. Given the unequal distribution of power across generations, it is likely that the current generation will tend to further their own interest to the detriment of the overshoot generation, even if, in the end, the climate policies enforced by the current generation do indeed fulfil the interests of the post-overshoot generation. The implications for international relations are momentous, as we intend to show in this article.

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© Como citar este artigo:
Araujo, Marcelo de; Fior, Pedro; Menezes, Pedro. 2024. "Ten Years After the Paris Agreement: The Tragedy of the Overshoot Generation". In e-International Relations, 7 Janeiro 2025. https://www.e-ir.info/2025/01/07/ten-years-after-the-paris-agreement-the-tragedy-of-the-overshoot-generation/